Chicken Bones
by wonderwoundedhearers
Summary: Some would think that scapegoating the Joker for your own crime is suicide. She sees it as the greatest joke of all. Nolanverse, minor Harley/Crane & eventual Harley/Joker. Non-canon Harley. Lem/Lang.
1. Read Me

A day in Gotham City starts out in one of three ways for most of its 30 million inhabitants.

The first: the shrilly ringing alarm clock. The hand slaps it quiet. The legs tumble out from under clean sheets. Milk hits the cereal bowl. The tie is tightened around the thickening neck. Goodbyes are exchanged. The attaché is grabbed going out of the door.

Not so many wake up this way, but those who do are the elite, the businessmen, the suits, the ones who spend their lives in meetings and pretending that they're not bored of it all, that they're not already dead inside.

The second: the displaced puddle wake-up call. The screeching taxi taking the sharp corner. The water soaking to skin. The gasp and, consequently, the hacking cough. The inevitable curse of _godfuckingdammitasshole_! The tired slumping up and through the alleys for food.

More wake up this way than the first. Gotham's streets are filled with the poor, the destitute, the men and women who made the choice to go their own way and were left behind because of it.

The third: her realisation that today is _the _day. Her sudden transition from dreamless sleep to full consciousness. Buzzing in the tips of her fingers. Her skin lighting up with sensation beneath the cool white sheet she threw over the both of them last night.

Only one wakes up this way. She lies still, taking in her first breath for the morning through her nose. The air is cool, sweet, hinting at rain. There's no sunlight painting the walls – the day will be rainy, grey, _perfect_.

Her lips curl.

* * *

><p>Gotham Bank opens the same way it's done every day, since 1925.<p>

Mr George, the manager, pulls up out back, his black Merc shining dully in the dim morning light. He parks in his space, checks his thick black mustache in the mirror, adjusts his spectacles, and steps out of the car, careful not to crease his freshly pressed suit.

He pulls out his ring of keys, opens the back door with the littlest, types in the code on the mounted pad by the door, and _bingo_, open sesame.

The tired night guard tips his head from behind his desk in the security office. "G'mornin', Mr George."

Mr George doesn't deign to reply, just carries on down the hallway to his own space, the bright fluorescent lights reflected in his shoes.

His office is neat, minimal, not made for comfort, but there's a bottle of whisky in the locked bottom drawer of his desk that no one knows about. Except for him. And _her_.

While he watches his employees arrive on his security monitor, setting up his computer and desk as they busy themselves turning on the lights and readying the heavily-guarded teller positions, he doesn't see the most important event of the day unfolding. Or, at least, he didn't see the first, second, and now he's missing the third.

The moment he had pulled up, she'd ducked from behind Samuels the night guard's broken-down Chevy to Mr George's flashy Mercedes-Benz. The roll had been quick, seamless, barely skimming the chassis as she slid beneath the car silently.

She had waited, face-down, eyes up and on the back doorstep. When he'd opened the back door, she'd swiftly shimmied out from under the car and dived for the door.

The black and silver plastic credit card had stuck beautifully. She'd smirked at the name on it, winking up at her from between the steel door and the metal frame.

"Thanks, babe."

And then she'd waited to the side.

Samuels was slow, tired from his night shift, muttering about Mr George and _his __lazy __ass __self __not __being __able __to __shut __a __door __properly_, and when he'd finally come out to see what the problem was, jiggling the lock, he was taken down.

She'd shaken off some of the blood on the hammer after wrenching it from his skull, his cap askew on his bleeding head as she looked down at him, replacing the hammer to her make-shift tool belt. She'd dragged him inside and shut the door, pocketing the credit card on her way.

Samuels' desk had been quiet, the flickering monitors around it soundless, and she'd known that she had thirty minutes until Shaw came to take over as the day guard.

So she'd opened the cool box in the corner, pulled out a can of soda, and sat down, kicking up her feet on the desk, to watch the people milling in, just like Mr George was watching them at that very same moment.

She'd brushed off some dirt from her striped leggings, checked her numberless watch, drank her Coke, and watched Rebecca Drake, a teller, smiling to herself and texting on her cell for the fifth time in five minutes before she had to get to work.

She'd tilted her head, watching the dark-skinned girl through the black and white TV. She'd wondered whether her boyfriend would cry if she died today.

Here's where Mr George realises something's wrong, because not only has the night guard _whateverhisnameis_ not informed him of leaving the premises, but the day guard _I __think __it __begins __with __an __E?_ hasn't checked in at all.

He thinks he's seen him on the monitor somewhere, but he can't recall where or when. He rewinds.

As he does, she takes her cue, the red light of the CCTV memory system being activated blinking to her as if it were green. _Go_.

She steps over the, literally, brainless Shaw, sashays down the corridor towards the main floor, passes all the tellers right behind their backs, eyes the money going into the electronic drawers with the least amount of interest, and closes the empty vault room door to behind her.

The room's vast, hall-like, drawers of goodies and treats of all kinds right at her fingertips.

She thinks about Paul, the forgetful vault guard, outside right now taking that call about his wife. He doesn't know it's bogus, but his wife does like playing with the sharks. He's always known she'll get cut one day because of it.

But out of all the drawers in the vault, there's only one that takes her interest: 394. It's right next to the door.

It doesn't take a hammer, or an explosive, or even a _key_ to open it. The clientele wouldn't store their heirlooms in the oldest bank in Gotham if they knew, but there's ten minutes exactly where every drawer in the vault is open to anyone who wants a piece.

Her chipped fingernails pull it open, her eyes peek into the shadow, and she grins.

_Restricted_

_Arkham Asylum Patient File #266_

_[TO BE DESTROYED]_

She tuts – someone's been bad, keeping secrets all to themselves.

The files are thick, some yellowing and some fresh, some with pictures pinned inside and just peeking out of the manila edges. Thick black marker spells the names she's been looking for for a some time.

"Come to mama."

The files fill the formfitting metallic backpack hugging her spine. She closes the top with a soundless click.

She knows she has five minutes before she has to retrace her steps out of the bank, and she can't resist.

* * *

><p>"Is it on? <em>Frank!<em> Yeah? Yeah? Okay! Good morning, Gotham, and what a morning this is with another attack already hot on the heels of last week's. The Joker, the most prolific among the insane and sadistic criminals to terrorise Gotham, fresh from his near-foiled heist of last Monday has struck again and this time it is at the heart of the very city…

"Here, inside Gotham Bank, the self-named Clown Prince of Crime brutally murdered two guards less than an hour ago and planted timed explosives inside the bank's vault. Sources say his entry and escape were not seen by any of the employees inside the closed bank, and that footage has yet to be recovered from the various CCTV cameras inside the building– One moment! I'm just being told that…yes, a note has been recovered from the vault where the explosives destroyed more than a billion dollars worth of security-protected property…

"This note, along with a recovered Gotham Bank credit card in the Joker's name, was found stuck on the outside door of the vault. The note is said to read, '_Here. __Have __this __one __on __me_.' There have been no casualties, but various employees have been injured. Is the Joker losing his edge, or just going for a softer approach to his usually-cruel pranks? Only time will tell…

"I've been Vicki Vale. Back to you, Tom."

A click and the screen goes dim.

He sits back in his chair, the worn leather creaking, as he sucks on the inside of his scarred cheek.

An imposter, a _faker_, a rogue looking to tag onto his name and his success. It won't do.

He picks at a stray piece of lint on his shirt sleeve, flicks it away, wonders if this rogue needs to be dealt with the _old __fashioned _way, or if they can be drawn into his misshapen crew of nuts and ex-gangsters.

Or is this imposter, this _poor_ imitation, working for another crew, a different family, the mob perhaps?

He only knows one thing at this moment: the credit card was a nice touch.


	2. Touch Me

"That wasn't smart, Harley."

Smirking at his voice behind her, she drops the Chinese takeaway for lunch on the small counter in their little kitchen before hopping up onto the side.

He's sleep-ruffled – probably slept all morning, right through her fabulous bank job no doubt – with pink riding high on his prominent cheekbones and his dark hair pointing this way and that. His chest is naked, except for his various scars, and the way his grey sweats are riding low on his slim hips makes it seem as if he's only just slung them on.

She knows she looks hungry for him, because she certainly feels it.

"Come on, sweetness. I thought it was perfect," she murmurs, crooking her finger for him to come closer.

He walks towards her from the doorframe to the kitchen – his arms are crossed firmly over his chest but his ice-blue eyes are sparking with that tasty bit of mischief that she likes about him.

"It was _stupid_," he reiterates, staring her down.

Harley grins at him. "But perfect, right?"

His own smile surfaces, but he doesn't say anything. His arms fall from his chest, leaving those deliciously pink scars on show for Harley's interested silver gaze, and his hands find the outside of her thighs, stroking.

"I missed you this morning," he breathes against her ear, and she resists a shiver.

Jonathon's good, great even, a lover without parallel for her, and although he doesn't own her, can't capture her at all in the way she captured him, his voice does do funny things to her insides when his words are pressed against her ear like that.

She wraps her legs around his hips, drawing him closer. "I was a little busy, but I'm all free now."

His lips are already running down her neck, hot breath fanning over her pulse, and his thumbs are doing wicked things to the inside of her thighs.

Harley grabs him back, holds him close as she lets him breathe her in. It's always a favourite of his, this kind of foreplay, and her morning's gone so well she feels like fully obliging him.

Jonathon's always had a good nose, and as soon as he catches the faintest hint of her cunt, his fingers attempt to bruise her thighs and his teeth come down on her bare shoulder.

And then all bets are off.

His mood can change like the wind, a product of the high level of his toxin that he had been infected with, and she loves it. He's fierce and unpredictable, and it's the only time he'll ever come close to doing her harm.

Again, she thinks of how perfectly everything went, and she lets him have his fun. She'll get hers too, but only once his craze winds down, and she's so mellow with triumph right now she doesn't want to play too hard with him.

"D'you want the suit off?" Harley asks, soft and come hither and she can see how much it drives him crazy by the way his chest begins to rise and fall even more rapidly.

He growls something at her that sounds a lot like _fuck_, before pushing his hands up beneath her tight corset and pulling down her leggings. She goes to help him, enjoying the force behind his tugs, but he holds her down, pinning her with one forearm.

She gasps, the noise stifled from biting her lip the way she is. She's so wet, so ready for him with him being so rough, and as he lifts her legs up, not bothering to pull her leggings off over her black sneakers, she can see how dilated his pupils have become.

He pushes her thighs apart, ducks between them, and comes up through them looking ready to fuck her right through the solid wood counter.

But she can't help but snigger at the way her feet are trapped, him caught between her thighs like some two-person puzzle, until, that is, he snarls and yanks down his sweats.

He's so thick, the rounded head flushed red and leaking, and she thinks that's another reason she enjoys being with the ex-Scarecrow so much, because he really does have such a perfect cock. Slightly bent, just right for catching that spot inside her, and long enough to make her wince beautifully in the right position.

She wriggles against him, savouring the strangled noise he makes as his cock slides against the slick slit of her cunt and through the small patch of dark blonde hair she keeps above it.

He hunches over her, thick muscles coiling as he pulls his hips back, and buries his face in the crook of her neck as he pushes the entire length of his dick inside her.

Harley closes her eyes for a second, her fingers curling around the edge of the counter in pained pleasure, before nudging Jonathon's face back up to hers and baiting that dark twisted thing inside of him.

"_Fuck_ me."

His lips curl in a silent snarl and then he's there, pounding into her just how she wants him to, the curve of his cock catching something special inside of her as he watches her intently.

She can feel his balls, hear them smacking the curve of her ass as she pushes herself against him, and the sound makes her clench around his dick wildly.

He cries out, burying his face against her again and biting at her as she pulls him as close as possible with her sneakered heels pressing against his ass.

"Harder, sweetness."

He grabs her by the shoulder blades, fingertips digging into her spine, and she realises she's not as mellow as she thought and that, in fact, she's going to come as loudly and as violently as he most definitely will.

But she won't go alone.

She urges him on. "Come on, sweetness. You want this. You know you want this. Fuck me harder. I want to really _feel_ it."

She can nearly taste it, that peak of energy coiled so tightly and about to spring apart and wash over her entirely, and then his pelvis grinds against her clit and she's lost, screaming, as Jonathon wraps his arms around her in a full bind and comes apart hot and thick inside her.

Harley smiles, throwing herself back onto her elbows on the counter, and waits for Jonathon to catch his breath, still his shaking hands clutching at her, and, more importantly, figure out whether he wants the tangerine chicken or the beef chow mein.

Instead, it seems he was thinking about something else, because when he lifts his head his eyes aren't blown black pupils anymore, they're ice-blue and…well, terrified, she thinks.

"Christ, Harley. You're all I have."

She blows her fringe off of her forehead with a hot puff. "Stop it."

He shakes his head, but says nothing.

Harley pauses for a second and thinks about how she came across his sorry, pathetic bag of bones in the Narrows being picked over by some vultures. She'd been looking for him for a while, eager to get started on her plan, and hadn't been pleased to learn he'd been thrown out of Arkham due to overpopulation.

The great Scarecrow, not enough of a danger to Gotham City to keep him locked up! It was the best joke she'd heard in years.

The doctors in the asylum, she knows, are idiots, always concerned about treatment and rehabilitation when they have some of the greatest minds at their fingertips. Just because Jonathon is cracked doesn't mean he doesn't _know_ things.

It had been child's play taking down those goons swarming over him, but it had been a _lot_ more work shaping him back into something useful, and on the way to usefulness he had become a little more.

She'd kept him safe, given him a place to stay, let him eat her Cheetos in the middle of the night when he'd had the munchies from one of his night terrors about bats, and she'd even let him train with her on occasion, showing him how to use some of her kit and doing a few gymnastic displays, for which he was always the awed audience.

In return, he'd unknowingly given her a few recipes for disaster, _literally_. His long-lost formulas were safely locked away inside her skull. But he'd also given her something she hadn't really wanted – and still isn't quite sure on – and that was unconditional…affection.

She can't rightfully call it love, because love grows and Jonathan was all over her from day one. He only thinks of her.

She knows because he doesn't have the night terrors any more, he only whispers her name.

So…maybe Harley is all he has, she's his whole world, but he's not hers. She has other countries, other continents even, oceans of _other __things_ in her life, and the thing about her and Jonathan is that they both know it.

And that's Jonathan's gift, something she can't buy: unflinching loyalty.

He knows she won't listen when he tells her _to __be __careful, __because __he __just __can__'__t __lose __her_, just like he knows he can act as normal as he wants by day but they both know when the sun goes down he'll be at her side because he can't bear to be cold and scared again.

So, instead of saying something Harley knows won't fly with either of them, she trails his longest scar, running jaggedly from shoulder to hip, which she treated herself, and leans in.

"Some sugar?"

His eyebrows rise hopefully and he nods once.

The kiss she gives him is nothing short of spectacular, something she knows he appreciates like hell. He likes kisses, and he _craves_ hers.

She nibbles his bottom lip, lets her breathing hitch gently against his mouth, and kisses him like he is the only man she will ever kiss.

It's a beautiful lie, one that keeps him sane and at her side.

* * *

><p>Jackson's office is messy, something the Joker doesn't quite appreciate when it's not messy with work, just trash. He absently flicks through a stray file off of the battered desk, looking around the dark room as he does.<p>

It's warm, dusty, and it smells like peppermint. He wonders what the hell he pays him for anyway.

And then, with a flicker of a smirk, he remembers he doesn't. He killed him a few days ago, right after Jackson had given him that information on the Mad Hatter that turned into one hell of a wild goose chase.

But still, he wonders if Jackson might know something from beyond his watery grave about the Joker's imposter.

It doesn't take him long to pile up Jackson's files on the desk, run through them, and find sweet fuck-all.

"The _personal_ touch, then, hmm?"

He's already put out feelers and the fear of God into his guys to make sure they don't keep any information to themselves, not even gossip. They've been coming to him with suspicions about the Riddler and an array of other _lesser_ criminals behind the bank job, but he knows it's something else, _someone_else.

The families have been quiet, the Mob only talkative when he took the time to adequately threaten their earnings, and he wonders if this rogue really is one.

"The personal touch."


	3. Hear Me

Jonathan sits in the rocking chair at the window while she works by lamplight at the desk. The newspaper clippings pasted to the surface are yellowing, a reminder that time is ticking away – time, that is, that could be spent out in Gotham getting things done, but she knows the research is just as important as the execution.

Harley glances up, over the pilfered files and the fluorescent desk lamp, and lazily eyes the photographs pinned to the wall above the desk.

The red strings crisscrossing the photos map her course, the green ones link the subjects together, and the purple ones? Well, they're just a bit of fun, a distraction for Jonathan whenever he becomes too interested. He likes purple.

"Harley?"

"Hmm?"

"Bud and Lou are awake."

She throws down her pencil and leaves her plans for later, turning to see black eyes glinting from the darkened doorway to her left.

Harley beams and slips off of her chair, throwing her arms wide for her babies. There's no pause, just the sound of their scrabbling against the floorboards to get to her.

They hit her with force, before immediately pawing at her tank and shorts and licking at her face and neck. She can't help but giggle.

"_Boys_! Boys!"

Their cackles chime with hers, and in the end they're a pile on the floor, Harley pressed beneath their nearly-adult bodies. Their noses are cold against her face, and as she roughly runs her fingers through their highly spotted fur she feels their tongues peek out again.

Jonathan appears, standing over them with his book dangling from his hand. His glasses are on his head, his t-shirt rumpled as it hugs his chest, and she wants him to join in.

"Go to Crow," she murmurs, smirking, in her boys' ears.

The hyenas twitch and turn, leaping at Jonathan's ankles beneath his grey sweats. He falls with an _oof_ and a thud, and her boys keep him against the floorboards while she crawls over his prone body.

As their faces align, his eyes lose their panicked navy colour. He's always terrified her babies will turn on him, and, she thinks as she pushes one hand into his dark mussed hair, he's right to be. Bud and Lou will do anything for her – _anything_ – and even though he's fed them, petted them with her, let them curl at his feet beside hers, they only remember Harley and her word above all others'.

She kisses across Jonathan's face, catching his lips with hers and slipping her tongue past them as Bud and Lou lie down beside the couple contently.

Jonathan moans low in his throat, his hands coming up and running along her spine as she wriggles in a way she knows he likes. But before she can do anything else, maybe nip at his neck or thumb his warm navel, there's a hush.

She opens one eye and sees Lou, low and coiled, with his yellowed teeth bared at the window. Outside is Gotham, bright and dark, beautiful in its nastiness, and she immediately catches what Lou has.

A pair of unwanted eyes watches them, and as she springs for the window, pushing the locked latch clean off of the sill, those eyes widen in horror.

* * *

><p>The Joker sits calmly for once. Usually there's a hubbub, something going wrong or right or some kind of ridiculous celebration in the ranks, but tonight there's silence.<p>

In his office, behind his desk, he can see everyone.

The room looks out over the factory floor he'd acquisitioned a few weeks or so ago, after the Batman destroyed his first home away from home. It's like the guy doesn't know he has a business to run and a reputation to keep up – he can't do that if he doesn't have a base from which to conduct all of his sinister dealings and nefarious plots.

He has one in mind right now for example, one to hang his rogue from an outstretched arm of Lady Justice herself atop Gotham City court house.

It had been _amusing_, for the first few days – the news reports on it were boring, but entertaining in their own way with all their little twists of the truth, and then there was the anticipation of finding the bastard responsible for that little job.

But the first few days had turned into weeks, and there's still no information. Nothing.

That is until Rossi nearly breaks down his damn door, the dark haired sneak panting and sweating.

"We got a message, Boss," he wheezes, and the Joker takes to his feet.

He steps past Rossi as the man moves aside, looks over the railing down at the shop floor, and sees a black sack.

It's non-descript, plain, something he might use if he wanted just to be rid of someone, and it's been thrown down before the railing, lumpy and suspiciously wet.

"Open it," he says to no one in particular, resting his forearms on the railing and watching the scene with obvious amusement to all the gathered onlookers below.

A brave one steps forward from the circle surrounding the bag with a stray box cutter. He slices the parcel open.

Inside is Rip, or what's left of one of the Joker's 'feeler's anyway. His face is missing, but he can tell it's him – there's a tattoo on the neck, a fat black teardrop, and the smell that rises from the bag is a mixture of cheap pornography and even cheaper whisky.

"Where was he?"

Rossi hacks a cough behind him, before spitting out, "He was outside the damn door."

"How long for?"

"Three minutes. Tops."

"Well." The Joker leans back, rolling his shoulders. "Looks like we're dealing with a wise-ass. Suit up, boys. Smiles' team with me – we're going over Rip's ground. Looks like he got close to something."

* * *

><p>She's pissed.<p>

She has a right to be, she thinks, with that disgusting lurker outside her window, watching as she teased Jonathan and played with her babies. The intrusion makes her feel sick, and pissed – very, very pissed.

She'd thought her place was safe, a good spot for recon and a tidy hideaway, and…who uses a goddamn _ladder_ anyway?

A noser, a sneak, a bastard looking to get cut for putting his beak where it doesn't belong, and he got cut alright. Even Jonathan took a piece of the cunt – the Joker would find that special appendage missing if he chose to look close enough, but she knows he hasn't.

He's walking, just fucking _strolling_ through the streets with his team as if he owns the city, and, in a way, he does. He's untouchable in that purple suit and behind that white greasepaint, because that's all the Joker is – fabric and smear. But behind that he feels pain, and he'll know hers. Eventually. And her? Oh, she's so much more.

She's beyond the Joker, beyond his comprehension, but that doesn't mean he can't get close, and she's come to love her apartment with Jonathan. She's put so much work into getting it right, building Jonathan a lab, making her gym perfect for her exact needs that she can't let it go to waste, can't let him find it.

All because of a cunt on a ladder.

She scowls down at the Joker's striding form, surrounded by masked henchmen and a few shaking crazies dawdling along at the back. He's bringing fodder, and she nearly smirks at how _all_ of them will be fodder if they get too close.

She keeps a sharp eye on them, running along the rooftops above their heads as silent as a shadow and just as invisible, even in daylight.

A spin, a tuck, a dive, a leap, and all without taking her eyes off of the men getting closer and closer to where Jonathan's currently leading Bud and Lou back to their playroom and waiting for her anxiously where she told him to.

Her blonde hair flicks in her eyes as she flies across expansive gaps that most people would never even consider jumping, and she absently wonders whether she should dye the tips of her hair a different colour other than faded red.

But she doesn't miss a jump as she wonders, or a trick as the Joker leads his gang into the darker parts of Gotham City, into the unpredictable hive where she chose to set up shop. He takes them a strange route, leading them around in a wide circle before letting the ranks thin out.

They're making a sweep, and her lip twitches up at the corner as she realises. They'll be so easy to pick off.

She tails one group, watching them from her high perch as they check alleys, smash windows, peer into holes in the ground as if she'll leap out and declare herself the one who left that present on their doorstep.

"Fucking idiots."

They're easy to dispatch – a few well-aimed shots with her BB gun to stun and blind them and a few swings of her hammer to finish them off once her feet touch the ground.

And then she's off again, scaling the closest building and running across the closely packed rooftops to find another team of goons.

They go down in much the same way as the first, even though they're all much bulkier and more built. But the stacked guys aren't any match for the explosive she rolls beneath their feet, one of the kind Jonathan makes for her crammed with gelignite and other goodies.

The third team take a little more time, picking off a few crazies at the back before slamming down on the main group with another spherical bomb dropping between them and then finishing off the crippled and dying.

And the fourth team? Oh, she hasn't gotten to them yet, because she just wants to watch as the Joker and the fistful of unpredictable nuts trailing along behind him move further away from her place.

They stop along one street, and Harley has the chance to get a closer eye and ear on what's going on, so she does. She slides down an angled rooftop, sneaker-first, and crouches in the shadows as she watches the scene a few metres below her.

One of the crazies raises a shaking hand, just like a child, and the Joker grunts for him to _ask __his __damn __question_.

"T-The heartbeat m-monitors, th-they've–"

She watches the Joker suck on the inside of one cheek as his black eyelids fall over his dark eyes into a narrowed, heavy-lidded stare. He doesn't say anything, just stands at the mouth of the alley behind him and watches the pathetic group.

"Hmm, well, I guess that means were next then," he says in that drawling, pitched tone.

They go nuts, shrieking and wailing, and as she watches she understands his game. His eyes are flickering around, almost unnoticeably, as the last of the day's sunlight falls in orange rays across the buildings around them.

He's waiting for the one picking off his guys to come for him, and he's banking on her hearing their screams and heading straight towards him. He's banking on her to make a mistake, maybe take the rapidly darkening alley behind him and take a shot at his unprotected back.

He doesn't know she's watching him, smirking at his ploy, wondering if she should just shoot him from where she is or take the alley for shits and giggles.

The BB gun's light in her hand, the black and red paint peeling from its brushed steel body, and she absently runs her thumbnail along the back ridge as she contemplates shooting the clown in both eyes.

But, unfortunately, it would screw with her plans a little – nothing major, not really, but enough for her to feel reluctant about drawing up another schedule.

The gun is replaced to her belt, and instead she takes a short trip around their little gang to face the Joker's back from the rooftop at the other end of the short alley.

She can see his hand twitching, the glint of a knife, and she rolls her eyes to herself. Jonathan's going to have a fit when he finds out she took on an armed Joker.

* * *

><p>He can feel something, smell a little of something else, but he can't see anyone. The goons in front of him aren't throwing him off, but something else is.<p>

The Joker's palm tightens around the hilt of his homemade shank. He wants his rogue to take the bait, but he can't be certain if they will.

Not that he needs to be certain – he appreciates unpredictability – but, right now, he's not looking for something to amuse him, he's looking for a fight, or a deal, either, maybe both…

The crazies in front of him are scattering, and he wonders if he's missed his shot, but before he can turn his head, see if the rogue took a shine to stabbing him in his turned back, his shank becomes missing from his hand and he finds it pressing firmly against his internal jugular.

The Joker eyes the slim, pale arm curling around his neck, and the way the hand is holding the shank, thumb pressed to the rough wooden hilt with the fingers wrapped around it. Clean, professional, ready to kill.

He smirks a little, says nothing, eyes the indecipherable tattoo to the feminine wrist, the watch with no face, the chipped black nails, and the steadily beating pulse in the clean crook of her elbow.

She smells like leather, apricot, and confidence, and without any drag marks? This is someone for the books – a self-assured killer with some tendencies that would raise more that one severe brow in Arkham and no hard drug addiction.

Even he has scars, crawling across both crooks, and sometimes, especially in the mornings, he can still taste that excruciating high.

Her breath is warm and steady against his neck, her breasts pressing high on his back, and he wonders if she's really nearly as tall as he is or if she's wearing heels.

He can't tell, can't _predict_, and it makes him smirk again.

"Your little boy," she suddenly murmurs at his ear, "saw something he shouldn't've."

The Joker keeps his silence. She laughs.

Where most people would get angry, make a mistake, do something stupid, give him the upper hand, she stays still and steady, her hand ready to cut him across.

She suddenly tips his chin up and runs her nose up his neck, inhaling. He can feel something cool pressing against his skin and he realises she has a nose ring.

He eyes the kit his boys have left behind, approximates its distance, considers how quickly he can reach the automatic peeking out of an open metal case, and asks himself if anything actually needs to be done.

She's stalling.

She presses her words to his neck. "You don't need to talk, baby. I just want to leave you with one thought: what are you afraid of?"

As her arm disappears, he turns and grabs at the knife. It slips through his fingers, and then he's staring at nothing but air and the shadows of the alley.

He looks down to see the shank glinting up at him from his breast pocket and…beneath his feet, on the damp concrete, is the distinct diamond-patterned outline of sneakers.

"She really was that tall," he says to himself conversationally.


	4. Follow Me

She sifts through the file in her hand once more, scanning the nearly-unintelligible doctor's scrawl and the photographs clipped inside.

There's one picture she keeps going back to, trying to find something in it.

She would ask Jonathan but his days of knowing the inner workings of the mind are over. He can only create for her, follow his own faint memories and her guidelines.

If she asked him to place the parietal lobe he'd just look at her as if she'd spoken another language. It was sad really, she thought.

But then the picture she's looking at is meant to be too.

A bright smile painted across pale white skin, with too many teeth showing and not enough face. There's one tooth missing in the blonde girl's battered head, the gum sore and red even in death, and she knows that's where Tetch began his obsession with collecting "Alice's milk teeth."

"…_you __know, __Alice __needs __looking __after__…"_

Harley rewinds the tape she's listening to lazily, back to the beginning, as she eyes the photograph.

"_Session __number 24 __with __Jervis __Tetch; __present __is __Dr __Williams, __Dr __Able, __and __Dr __Goodwin. __Hello, __Jervis.__"_

"_Hmm, hello."_

"_How are you feeling today?"_

"_Fine. Fine."_

"_Good. How was yesterday?"_

Tetch's silence lasts as she runs her thumbnail over the girl's cracked image, broken and bloody and his very first Alice.

"_Yesterday __was__…__trying_."

"_Trying_?"

"_Yes. __Don__'__t __you __know __I __saw __Alice, __but __she __wouldn__'__t __turn __when __I __called __after __her! __Wicked __girl! __Alice! __Alice!__"_

"_Now, do calm down, Jervis. I'm sure you'll see Alice again soon."_

"_Oh, yes. I certainly will."_

"_What do you mean by that?"_

"_Nothing. Nothing. Everything, too!"_

"_This Alice, Jervis, is she tall?"_

"_Tall? Why, yes! She is! She's far more grown than when I last saw her, but, oh, that was so very long ago. She's probably been eating things that she shouldn't again."_

"_Does this Alice look like this woman here, Jervis?"_

"_Oh! Alice! Yes! Yes! Can I have it? I've always wanted a picture of her to keep for myself."_

"_Her name is not Alice."_

"_What? Of course it is. Alice, Alice, Alice. Such a lovely name."_

"_No, this woman's name is Joanna, Jervis. She's a nurse here. She delivers your food, doesn't she?"_

"_Yes, well, Alice has always wanted to look after me, you see. She likes to pour my tea. But, you know, Alice needs looking after, not me! She needs to be petted and held, and when she tries to scamper off, you see, that's when her legs need to be broken–"_

"_I think that's enough."_

The tape clicks and whirs to a stop, and Harley pushes her hand through her hair as she watches the long-dead girl smile up at her from the photograph.

She _could_ just…

She throws the file shut on the desk and pushes away from it, scraping the chair legs against the worn floorboards as she stands up and then crosses the room on bare feet.

Bud and Lou and asleep in front of the TV in the lounge, tangled up together in a ball of spotted fur as their favourite Tom & Jerry plays, and she smiles down at them before she goes to find Jonathan.

"Sweetness?"

Her call is met by silence.

She looks through the kitchen, the bathroom, the gym, and then hears music, coming from his lab. She takes the dark hallway down to the short staircase that leads into his little domain.

The wooden steps are silent beneath her quick feet and she took the door that should have been at the bottom of the stairs off its hinges long ago.

He's working in a dirty white lab coat and black pants, bare foot like her, and she gives him a smile as he turns to look over his shoulder.

"Hey. You working on it?"

His lips twitch. "Of course."

She knows what he means. She wanted it done and so he'll do it.

Spread out across the steel table in front of him is a range of chemistry equipment, from a variety of filled glass beakers to a stolen centrifuge filched from Ace Labs.

"I want it _particular_," she says meaningfully, coming up behind him and letting her breath fan across his neck.

He shivers visibly. "I know."

"How long?"

"Another hour and you'll have it."

She hums, pleased, and turns his body around to meet hers once his hands are empty. Jonathan gazes at her with bright blue eyes that steadily darken to navy at, she's sure, the look that's in hers.

She's happy, and when she's happy she's very giving.

"Have you got a minute?" Harley asks huskily, and Jonathan swallows hard.

"Yes."

With a smirk, she's on her knees and opening the bottom half of the poppers on his lab coat. The zipper to his pants goes next. He's not wearing boxers.

She bites the corner of her bottom lip, looking up at him. "Oh, sweetness, you were waiting for me."

Jonathan's shivering, panting, his skin heating under her grip on his toned thighs, and his cock is bobbing right at her mouth, nearly touching.

"You're so good to me," she tells him, making sure he feels her breath right where he's aching for her.

He lets out a pained noise and clutches his hands at his sides, as if to stop himself for reaching for her.

Harley weighs up the pros and cons, before deciding that she's pleased enough with him for him to touch her. She leads his hands to her shoulders and the noise that he releases makes her smirk – it's relieved and pained and so very fucking grateful.

And then she lets him feel her, just a lick at first but then she's taking him into her mouth. She's no tease, and she enjoys the way Jonathan tries to stifle his moans as she swallows around him.

"Oh, _fuck_…" He groans.

Harley hums, stroking the length of his cock with one thumb as she releases it from her mouth. She knows it'll only take him feeling her nail run across that velvety piece of skin connecting cock to balls, and as she slowly reaches it, nail running down, his balls visibly constrict and he yells out.

She's never _enjoyed _the taste of cum, but she handles it with a smirk like she does everything else. She is nothing if not a professional.

Jonathan watches her, biting his bottom lip until it turns white, and he shudders at her every swallow around him, his cum bitter and thick as it slides down her throat.

Once he releases his lip and she releases his cock, he sighs and smiles. "It may take a little longer now."

Her laughter echoes.

* * *

><p>He's thought about her words for a while, and, if he was in a telling mood – which he <em>rarely<em> is – he'd even go as far to say that he thought about them in his sleep.

And this disturbs him.

His sleep is precious, has been ever since he lost the ability to fall unconscious for more than three hours every night, thanks to the Bat and his proclivity for an unannounced arrival, and anything that disturbs his sleep…well, it's not _appreciated_.

And this rogue, this…_girl_, wants to whisper to him in the black?

No. Not happening. _Not_.

The Joker takes a short walk around his warehouse, shirtsleeves rolled up to bare his pale forearms and his collar unbuttoned to bare his even paler neck.

It's hot, nearly _too _hot, especially for Gotham, and he wonders if something's going down that he doesn't know about. Some heist, some shop job, or maybe – _maybe_ – his rogue's on the move again.

It's been days since he saw her, well, _felt _her, and he wants to cut to the chase already. He wants to know what she wants and then slit her fucking throat. Except…

Well, it wouldn't be fun, would it?

She's obviously not after him, or she'd have taken her shot in the alley when she had it, and he doesn't really care if the girl has other crazies to chase, but…still…he's curious. And his curiosity isn't piqued often.

The squared-off glass of the window he's standing at shows Gotham in pieces. The top squares frame its glow, the beginnings of 'bright lights, big city,' the centre squares show industry and growth, and then the bottom squares show it for what it really is, dank and dirty and…

His arm's itching again, aching for another high, preferably a needle but it'll settle for some cutting. He's never stooped that low, bleeding for bliss, but he hasn't had much choice of recent times.

He takes another walk – this time he gets his jacket from his office and goes out, knife in pocket and greasepaint already in place. He sticks to the shadows, watches the city go by from the dark, and occasionally he catches a glimpse of a familiar face.

He's already seen Mr Zsasz go by a time or two, skulking around a run-down dress shop. There's probably a pretty in there, a piece of skirt to scar his skin with, and Joker loses interest immediately, though he might go back later and see what comes of it.

He does like a good crime scene, especially one that sets cops' tongues wagging. It's usually then, with an unfriendly ear nearby, that they spill all the most _interesting _things.

_Just like the Riddler's latest, you know they saw him skulking in the sewers… There was a sighting of Croc around here, maybe he did it… Gordon says Wayne's funding for more tech in our kits, that'll help stop scum from doing shit like this…_

Joker gives a hum, sucking his cheek as his elbows begin to itch in time. He needs a distraction.

And, as if Batman himself dropped it right into his lap, a pretty present all wrapped up in red and black goes waltzing by. Over the rooftops.

With a smirk, he notices slender arms and a leather corset.

His rogue, just passing by, and he follows.

He tails her from block to block, not bothering to watch his step as he stares up at her bending, leaping, _twirling_ silhouette.

So, a gymnast? A freerunner? A circus freak, more like, what with those back-bends as she flings herself across alleys and the small streets riddling this part of the city.

She's toned too, from what he can see, all slender muscle and woman-flesh, and he does cast a brief eye over her ass as she bends forward for some kind of impossible flying tuck.

He wonders…

Soon, she's slowing down, and then she's stopping completely, just as the moon breaks from cloud-cover behind the highest buildings of upscale Gotham. She's bending and stretching, shaking off as he watches from the corner of the opposite building, down on street-level as he leans against the brick wall at his back.

His eyelids fall into a narrow-eyed stare as she bends again, but this time she's picking at the laces to her sneakers, throwing them off, rolling down her leggings…

He hadn't expected no panties. Definitely not.

She unlaces her corset, pull it apart until it falls down her legs so she can step out of it, and then she rolls down her camisole. She's stark naked, breasts perfectly silhouetted as she stands on the roof of one of Gotham's craziest joints, soaking in the moonlight.

His tongue wets his bottom lip, curling up once it's passed to touch tongue to tooth. A shiver passes through him, pleasant and cool in the hot night.

Unfortunately, he thinks as he watches her unroll something from her pack, he likes her.

Unfortunately, that is, for her.

She pulls something over her head, some kind of shift of a dress, and shakes out her long pale hair, and as she scales the side of the building, swinging off of the hat shop sign until she drops and her bare feet touch the ground, he decides to follow her.

Down the rabbit hole.


	5. Find Me

There aren't any guards or lackeys with guns ready to blow her head off as soon as she walks through the door into Tetch's domain, _The __Millinery_. It's because he knows his reputation, and his reputation is for being a psycho with razor sharp steel playing cards who will either turn you into one of his loyal hat-heads or will take out your brain and use your empty cranium as an ash tray.

That's if _he_ sets eyes on you. You walk into his club and all bets are off.

So most onlookers will see Harley walking into his place, through the grand green front doors, and turn their heads away, thinking she'll never be seen again. Some others will see her yellow hair and her pretty blue gingham dress and even _worry_ about what might happen to her, dressed up as a perfectly pale Alice.

But she, _she_, knows that she'll be walking out those very same doors not an hour later, completely unscathed.

The thick shamrock carpeting is long between her toes, faux grass, and though she hasn't seen the inside of the place before she knows it'll be something straight out from between the pages of a book. One in particular.

The hallway she's on is wide and short, a check-in area for anyone who would actually want to hang their hat in the small booth and spend some time with Tetch.

Of course, he hasn't had visitors in a long time, not since he started taking to drugging their tea and dissecting their brains.

The walls are pale purple, dark in some places and lighter in others making the walls seem as though they ripple. There's artwork too, scratched gilded frames encasing portraits of a little blonde girl dancing through the woods and scenes of tea parties and chess games.

There's only one door.

It's large, green, just like the front entrance, and it opens beneath her fingertips with just a touch. He must have oiled the hinges. It's like he knew she was coming.

Harley walks into the main room, and it's as grand as anything she's seen before, if a little warped.

The carpeting's the same, thick and lush like green grass, and there are no bare patches for the scattered and battered tables through the room. They sit tilted and cocked in strange ways, their reflections shown in the second wall of the room to her right in a floor-to-ceiling mirror. The ceiling's high but the ornaments are low, golden stars hanging down on invisible strings from their dark purple background among hanging teapots and cups.

"A visitor?"

The glee-filled voice comes from her right, and Harley turns to see the hunched form of Tetch bent over a table sitting askew atop a raised carpeted mound. His fingers are busy tinkering with a dark metal gadget, cogs and pieces scattered across the table, and his eyes are on his hands.

"I haven't had a visitor in…_let __me __see_, it must have been _years_! Positively years!" He announces to the room, hat low over his face.

His dark green coat has been discarded across a close table, his brown cravat along with it, and his dirty white shirtsleeves are up, rolled past his elbows. She can see a sliver of deathly pale skin between the two open sides of his shirt, the same skin colour as his white arms, and a lock of his auburn hair is curling up over the brim of his hat in the most haphazard of flicks.

And then, ever so slowly, her eyes meet his.

Tetch has never really been very good-looking, with a slight overbite and pasty skin he isn't a paragon of male sexuality, but he has always been very intelligent. Just like Jonathan, he uses the mind to control and to tame and to _bend _to his will, and this is why she likes him…or, more importantly, why she wants him.

She smiles.

Tetch's face slackens, his dark brown eyes scanning her face, her dress, her bare legs…

"Alice?" He asks, slowly standing from his seat and letting the chair fall back with a thud off of his little carpeted dais. "Is it…_really_ you?"

Harley smiles brighter, nodding and strolling towards him. "Certainly is."

He crooks a long finger at her, his face blank but his eyes shining. "Come here, my girl."

She does. Slowly.

When Harley reaches Tetch he's already reaching for her, slinging one arm around her waist and gripping the back of the dress, pulling it tight across her chest and belly. His other hand clenches in her hair. On his face is an expression of childlike fascination.

"Your hair," he breathes, fingers combing through the loose locks, "There's blood in it."

Tetch thumbs the faded red tips of her hair, his eyes lighting up as they suddenly meet hers again.

"I've always wanted you bloody, fresh from a kill, my innocent Alice…"

He grips her hair and pulls her head back, hard. He buries his face into her neck, breathing hard and gripping her even harder.

As Harley's hands frame his shoulders, her eyes rove up to the top of his oversized top hat. There, just beneath a small patch of the green material, is just the thing she needs.

"Hatter," she says breathily, causing Tetch to groan and rear back to look her in the eye. "Do you still have my letter? The one I sent you?"

"Letter?" He frowns, dark brows drawing down over darker eyes. "I don't recall a letter."

"Are you sure?" Harley asks innocently.

Tetch bites his lip. "Well, perhaps if there was one I would have put it…"

Harley tunes him out as he reaches up, taking his hat off of his head and setting it down on the table behind them. He peels away the patch and flips the lock to his hat. The top moves, opening with a very slight _click_, and inside, once he pulls back the lid, she can see an array of things.

But the most important thing, among all the pieces of paper and junk, is a tiny black book kept shut by a length of brown leather and a gilded green pearl hat pin.

She grins. "Hatter?"

Tetch turns his head and looks at her as he shuffles through his things.

Harley slips her hand between the back parting in her dress, picking at the tape holding Jonathan's capped syringe to her spine.

"Yes?"

She grips it and draws it out, edging closer to Tetch and making him turn until his bared chest and neck is available to her eager fingers.

"Thank you."

Her thumb uncaps the syringe and pushes down the plunger once her palm has driven the needle into his exposed neck. The pale yellow toxin disappears into his body, and all Tetch can do is gasp.

A thin trickle of blood rolls from the wound as he falls back, landing with a muted thud onto the lower carpeted floor. His pocket watch slips from his pants, the face traditional and gold and the chain made from stolen bloodied teeth. His eyes glaze, his hands reach out, and he screams.

Harley pockets the book from his hat and leaves him to his worst nightmare: falling down the rabbit hole and never stopping.

"_Allliiiicccceee!_"

* * *

><p>The Joker's waited for a while, listening to what went on past the door in the foyer as he leant on the wall beside of it and now it's time for him to take another walk.<p>

And so he does. Straight to the rooftop.

It takes him a minute or two to find the fire escape, but he does and once he's on the roof, gravel beneath his shoes that makes him wonder how his rogue could cross it barefoot, he goes straight for her pile of clothes.

He stands in front of it, feet apart and shoulders set casually. He wants to see her expression.

It doesn't take long.

Soon enough she's lithely climbing up and then stopping dead, something in-hand as they stand off from each other across the expanse of the rooftop. The moonlight casts shadows around them.

Joker gets a good look at her face then, as she steps forward, the light passing over her skin. She's slightly pale, in a pleasing way, her lips are a soft red, a strike of black curling one corner, and her eyes are blue, one surrounded with a black half-mask and the other lined beneath like a harlequin.

The dress she changed into is thin and fluttering in a cool breeze through the hot night. It's gingham, and so very, very…

"…short."

One eyebrow lifts beneath her blonde fringe. "And that means?"

He eyes the hem of the dress obviously. "Short."

"Hmm." She glances down and back up, her lip quirking. "So it is."

There's a short silence.

"So, Jervis, huh? Have a thing for guys that are cracked?"

She flashes her teeth. "You have no idea."

Another short silence.

"You got a habit of getting naked on rooftops?"

A laugh. "Is that what you're waiting for?"

He doesn't reply. He considers her, from her long blonde hair right down to her annoying way of making him ask all the questions. It's like she doesn't care. It's like he, _the __Joker_, isn't as important as her schedule, and that….that just makes his jaw tick.

"Well," she suddenly murmurs, "If you want a show, you can have one. Just let me at my stuff."

And, with that, she pulls the dress over her head and lets it fall to the ground. Over the side of the building.

He watches her, eyes narrowed and cheek caught between teeth. His fingers twitch in his pockets, tightening around his knife and then flexing out once more.

He hasn't looked down yet, but he wants to. And he'll admit that. He'll also admit that the girl's got guts and some serious talent to get out of the Hatter's place untouched.

She's just standing there, straight and tall, hands comfortably at her sides, and he takes a look.

What he couldn't see before from street-level is displayed to him now openly. She's not thin and breakable, not like he might've thought before, because he can tell from an expanse of skin here and a faint dimple there that his rogue is muscled and that the curves of her body are strong. She's slim, but she's packing. And he finds that…tempting.

There's a quietness to the lines of her body, something pretty about her wrists and the way they're tattooed, even though he's still in the dark about the black marks and their meanings, and it's strange that her toned figure doesn't scream anything.

She's not like the women of Gotham, curved and coiffed to perfection, whether villainous or otherwise, and loudly shouting their wares. She's…dangerous.

She's a predator. She's silent. Her body is quiet and deadly, a masterpiece of evolutionary physiology, and she's unashamed of it.

There's always been something about some guys that he's noticed, that they'll take what they've got and they'll _be_ it, but he's never noticed a girl try it.

Oh, there'll be some pretties out there thinking they're strong and _capable_, and then they'll fall down running, dent something, hide away to lick their wounds and become something else, but _this __one_, well…she's already something.

She's beyond being comfortable in her own skin. She's beyond being comfortable with everyone else's. She is a woman. And she's a woman with a plan.

And if there's one thing that he likes _more_ than some new rivalry, it's a plan.

Joker steps away from her clothes and she's immediately ready for him, both of them circling each other until they've swapped positions.

He watches her get dressed with less objectivity.

Her legs are good, long, with strong thighs, and he's not completely oblivious to the neat pale hair between them. But he's always liked a stomach, and hers is flat, soft-looking, one where he could press his fingers to it and feel her heartbeat…

Nice tits, too.

She's pulling her hair from underneath the various straps of her costume and the loose collar around her neck, leading down to a golden skull and a trail of glittering red stones stringing down as though she's pierced her sternum.

She straps her pack over her shoulders and meets his eye.

"You thought any more about what I asked you, baby?"

Her voice isn't sickly sweet and trying, it's teasing and dark – the 'baby' only makes it more so.

"I've never liked bats," he tells her, lips twitching as they fight off a smile. "Well, one in particular. But he doesn't scare me."

She tilts her head at him a little. "No phobias? Snakes, small spaces…the dark?"

He watches her, thinking of her stunt in the main room of the club below. She'd stabbed Tetch and he'd screamed out – had there been more to it than that?

Joker steps towards her, leans in… "I'm not afraid."

She doesn't rear back, try to get away like most people would. She smirks and leans in too, whispering,

"I was afraid you wouldn't answer at all."

And then she's striding back from him, thumbs tucked under the straps of her pack as she gets closer and closer to the edge of the rooftop, grinning like she's just heard the joke of a lifetime.

"I'm sure we'll meet again soon, baby. But if you want to talk again sometime, just find R. D. Crusher."

She drops, one foot after the other, and as he walks over, hands in pockets, to look down the side of the building he sees her swinging from the hat shop sign and off into an alley, already running.

He exhales loudly once she's gone, fingers still clenched around his blade in his pocket. He doesn't know whether he wants to kill her, or…something entirely crazier.

He'll be finding Crusher.


	6. Join Me

Her plans are running smoothly, not a wrinkle or mishap along the way, and it's…suspicious.

She's never questioned herself before, never wondered why her plans have all worked out _to perfection_, but she'd planned for unforeseen circumstances and they haven't happened. At all.

That's what's truly eating at her as she stands at the kitchen sink, staring at the blackened brick wall across the alley that the window in front of her looks out on. Her fingers clench and unclench against the basin as she wonders how Penguin could have been so fucking easy to get to, how she's been able to research the Riddler like a GCPD detective's wet dream, and how she hasn't even had a whiff of the Joker going near Crusher in _weeks_.

He's playing it cool, she thinks, rolling her eyes. The one time she wants him to go barging into the storm she's creating and he doesn't. He fucking _disappears_.

Jonathan's felt her frustration over the past weeks, but it's escalating now, climbing into something unthinkable, because she's always so cool, and she's always so calm, and…_he's fucking with her_!

The Joker. It's all the Joker. The ease she managed to breach Cobblepot's Iceberg Lounge was ridiculous, the lack of man and firepower laughable for one of the city's biggest criminals, and the state she had found him in? There was no way – _no way_ – that the Penguin had had a run-in with Batman without it spreading through Gotham like wildfire, and there was only one other man who would dare take on Oswald in a fucking _fistfight_.

It's pissing her off, _he_'s pissing her off, and he's doing it without showing his face and without knowing her plans at all.

The Joker knows nothing about her, and yet he's managed to smooth her path down for her like a sanded piece of fucking _art_.

She hates him. She hates how he makes her feel predictable. She hates how he's smirking at her from the shadows as she rewrites her plans again and again and again to cater for _no _discrepancies whatsoever in the execution of them.

She hates how he's made her resort to…_pausing_.

She's rewound before, gone fast-forward, even _stopped_ on occasion, but she's never paused. She's never been unsure.

Because she's unsure now, as she stands at that sink above that alley behind that pane of glass. She's unsure as she rips Jonathan apart for asking what's wrong. She's unsure when she steps outside _her_ four walls unknowing whether or not she'll find her plans scattered to the wind once more.

And she _hates_ being unsure.

It makes her think of that prison, those two doors and walls that opened when they force-fed her those pink pills, and it makes her think of her mother, watching her over her shoulder as she left her there. To die.

There was no escape from there, only reinvention, only the certainty that nothing would be the same and everything beyond that room would be…_unsure_.

The certainty of uncertainty: a teddy bear with a fucking switchblade stitched up inside.

She glances at her wrists, turning her palms to see them properly. Those secrets, tattooed there like sketches of blurry thought, keep her grounded. They shackle her to the sink to make sure she doesn't fall away.

Harley hates working from something, _anything_, but sometimes a clean slate is hard to come by, and the Joker's spat all over hers.

So she'll make do. Because she has to.

She turns her head slightly, casting her gaze over her bare shoulder as her hair shifts with the movement.

Jonathan is curled, his knees pulled up to his chest as his arms keep them there while he hides his face against the wall, behind the low cabinet, like she can't see him if he keeps still enough.

She's never hurt him, but she's scared him before, and this is one of those times.

She is his only, and Joker's made her rocky. Jonathan doesn't do rocky. He _hates _rocky, just like she hates uncertainty, and she actually cares in this instance.

He's been good – _very good_ – and though she doesn't feel like she owes him anything, she wants him to not be scared of her. She likes him.

"Jonathan."

Her voice makes him flinch, his chest rising and falling rapidly as if waiting for the floor to crumble beneath him.

She closes her eyes for a moment, rearranges her black tank and shorts, and goes to crouch in front of him. He presses himself closer to the wall, his skin turning white and pink with the pressure of tensing away from her.

"_Sweetness_…" She breathes, pushing his messy fringe off of his forehead. "It's okay."

He tries to peek at her, as if one side is telling him to look and the other for him to run away, but, in the end, he looks, and what he finds in her expression makes him leap.

He throws his arms around her middle, pulling her down onto her knees as he buries his face against her stomach. She closes her eyes and sighs, tipping her head down to him as she runs her fingers, soothing, down his spine.

"It's okay, sweetness," she tells him, glancing up at the clock on the wall for the time. "It'll all be okay."

* * *

><p>He's found himself on the verge of sending out his feelers for Crusher more than once in the last few weeks. He's just <em>itching<em> with curiosity, and he's even started taking up with the white again.

But it's worth it, just if he can show this…this _bitch_ who he is and who _she _is. And she, she is _nothing_ compared to him.

He think he's been doing fine so far, trying to cover all the bases of who his rogue might go for next in Gotham's seedy underworld, and he's been learning as he's followed her bloody footprints.

He knows she's clean, he knows she's precise, and he knows she has one hell of a sense of humour. First, the credit card, and now, this?

_Hmm_. He's impressed. No one else would have the cojones to decimate his place with him and his crew inside of it, but on the other hand he's less impressed.

In fact, as he takes his switchblade to hand and cuts himself free of the burning wreckage, he would say he's beyond unimpressed. He's a little…frothy, especially at the mouth.

No one else is alive, and as he looks into the centre of the bombsite where an obliterated metal crate sits, he wonders which fucking idiot brought it inside without looking into it.

It's blown glittering confetti everywhere and if the walls were still standing he'd wonder if a party had gone down. It hasn't.

The girl is trying to kill him.

It makes him smile and tells him it's time.

* * *

><p>She knows, instantly, when he has found R. D. Crusher.<p>

The dial of her watch spins with a pulse from the battery attached to the remote sensor inside of it, and Harley glares down at it with a hard look.

He's finally decided to come out of his hole and he's chosen an absolutely _perfect _time. Her glower is obvious to Jonathan, who is currently beneath her, writhing and panting as his hair sticks to his sweaty forehead.

"What is it?"

She huffs out a breath and lowers her halted hips. His hands fall, disappointed, from her breasts.

"I need to meet someone."

He's not jealous as she thought he would be. In fact, he says nothing, only a muttered, '_Come back soon_.'

She strokes the forthcoming shadow of stubble on his jaw and kisses his ear, lifting herself off of him with a sigh from herself and a low groan from him.

She dresses in her usual gear, rolling the thick striped leggings up her thighs before pulling on a tank and then her corset over it. Jonathan watches her as his body cools, his eyes burning as she laces up her sneakers. He stays quiet.

"I'll be back with pizza," she tells him, smiling a bit as he cards his fingers through his tangles.

"My favourite."

His smile is sweet, almost childish, and she regrets having to leave him now when things were getting so good. He always holds her just…_right_.

She leaves before she can think about it any more.

* * *

><p>When they meet, it isn't with knives and bombs and flunkies ready to do their bidding. It's at the top table in Gotham Library, between the dusty and disused shelves of the philosophical section.<p>

The sleek woman at the circular reception desk had hardly raised her eyes from her computer when a dark suited man had walked by, but the blonde girl in black and red had gained her full attention.

She had watched with sharp eyes as Harley sashayed her way past the Sunday evening crowd (nearly no one) at the library desks and into the tall gilded stacks, past which were the stairs leading up to the topmost level of the library: a balcony which overlooked the entire place.

Now they stand across from each other, the Joker with his long dark purple coat thrown over one of the chairs at the table and Harley with her hands pressed to the tabletop. In one of his hands is _Chaos and Intent: A Traveller's Guide to Destruction_ by Raphael D. Crusher.

Joker picks at the spine of the book, peeling away a miniscule electronic transmitter taped to it. He '_hmm_'s and slides the book across the table to her.

She takes it and spins it on the tabletop, before pulling out a chair and sitting in it cross-legged. The Joker follows her lead without so much as his infamous narrow-eyed glare.

She knows he's been here for twenty minutes, yet it seems as though he's only just arrived. He's been waiting for her, she thinks, and he's been waiting patiently.

They finally level their gazes at each other, and he is the first to break the silence.

"Nice touch – the glitter."

She doesn't smile like she wants to, she just nods. "I know. Thought your guys should go out with a _bang_."

His lip quirks. "What about me, bunny? Were you expecting me to go up with that pathetic jack-in-the-box?"

"No." Her eyes, she knows, are cold. "It was a warning, and a favour. Those guys were fucking morons. What I did was a goddamn service."

Joker lets out a breath and kicks back in his chair, inhaling and exhaling.

"You know, I was angry at you, bunny – I won't lie – but now…" His fingers clench against the edge of the table. "I think I see a…_collaboration _on the horizon."

She dips an eyebrow. "And what makes you think I'll agree to it?"

His smile is wide and crooked, and, she thinks, if his cheeks weren't already split they would be by now.

"I think I've proved how easy I can make your life, and I don't think you're stupid enough to not understand that I can make it just as difficult." He taps the table. "I _own _this town."

Harley has always known it would come to this, making a deal with the so-called Devil, but she hadn't planned for it to be so soon.

"Always screwing with my plans," she tells him, leaning back in her chair.

"What can I say?" He opens his hands and spreads them out as he shrugs. "It's a talent I've always possessed."

"My conditions."

"_Go on_," he drawls out.

"I make the plans, and you have nothing to do with them. I have my own space, and you have nothing to do with it. I get to veto any of the people you choose for any of the jobs we may or may not do."

He leans towards her, forearms on the table as a tangle of his blonde-green hair swings off of his shoulder and across his dark eyes.

"And, for these conditions, I have three of my own," he tells her. "Your '_space'_ will be in _my _place, where I can keep an eye on you. I choose where we set up camp, with no whining from you." His eyes glint. "And if any of these plans go wrong, or I don't like how something is going, your _life_ is forfeit."

She eyes him silently for a second, before muttering, "I need space for a gym, a kennel, and my partner. Everything else is fine."

For the first time, he loses his cool. "_Partner_?"

Harley smirks a little, leaning forward as he leans back. "You don't think a woman like me can get a man?"

Joker's jaw ticks. He says nothing.

"No one goes near him," she tells him. "If they do, they get cut. Including you. He is _mine_."

His eyes narrow into that infamous glare. "That's _four_ conditions, bunny."

"Name your other then, baby. I'm all ears."

"We eat together. Twice a day."

Harley stalls for a second, but only on the inside. On the outside, she is cool and calm and looking as though she is thinking over their deal. On the inside, she is…hesitating.

She doesn't like eating with anyone but Jonathan. That intimacy is saved for the one person she chooses to sleep with. It's… She _hates_ eating with strangers. She's eaten alone for her life beyond the walls her mother left her in, ever since she was shanked in the lunch line, ever since she was pulled out when the guards weren't looking and raped to within an inch of her life… She eats with Jonathan and Jonathan alone.

Her palms sweat. She knows this is _his _condition for the deal to work.

"Fine, but it's just us two."

His smile is more than secretive. "I wouldn't have it any other way."


	7. Tell Me

Jonathan hasn't been happy with the changes she and the Joker have initiated. In fact, she'd nearly go so far as to say that he'd been _angry _with her. But that has passed – he is now simply silent.

She takes his arm, not bothering to tug up the sleeve of her long grey raincoat, and twists their hands together. He seems to relax a fraction as they head towards the building they will soon be calling home.

The red-brick block is a fortress, set in Old Gotham with close packed stone buildings surrounding it. The Joker had taken his time making it secure, once their deal was made and Harley had handpicked some guys to work security for them.

She'd also seen to her gym, Bud and Lou's kennels, and their bedroom on her and Jonathan's floor of the building without him. The Joker's place is two floors below.

Bud and Lou don't need leashes, they pad along beside Harley and Jonathan like normal domesticated dogs, except they're not domesticated – only when she's around – and if any of the new henchmen try to pet or feed them they'll find that out for themselves.

The doors open for them as they approach, and inside is Spider, one of the techies she'd handpicked.

He's nervous-looking and a bit sweaty from the heat inside, and the thick red spider tattoo on his neck is twisted as he looks up at her through his sandy fringe while he kneels at the door.

"Fixing the eye-scanner," he tells her. "Only way to get in once you guys are inside."

She smiles and lets Bud lick her hand. "Good."

She turns to see Jonathan levelling out a stare across the dark tiled foyer to the top of a back set of stairs that she knows lead down to the basement levels. At the top are five lackeys with guns in their pants and cigarettes between their lips.

She pulls Jonathan back, towards the elevator, before he can cause trouble for himself. The lackeys say nothing – they know who she is, and who _he _is, and, if they're lucky, they'll know what would happen if they even considered going toe-to-toe with Jonathan.

The elevator doors close them in a box in a soft _swish_ of sheet-steel and then they're riding up to the top floor, Bud and Lou panting with excitement at the trip they're on.

"I don't like the way they were looking at you," Jonathan says quietly.

Harley rubs a knuckle of his with the side of her thumb, but says nothing. He hasn't had to compete with another guy being around her before and she knows he finds it tough to distinguish those who are looking and those who are _interested_.

They arrive at their floor with a hollow ringing noise, before the doors open and Joker stands before them.

He's relaxed-looking, leaning back on the burgundy-painted corridor wall with an air of nonchalance, but his eyes tell a different story. She knows he's been waiting to see who her 'partner' is, and the way his black pupils turn to pin-pricks, even in the slight gloom, she knows he's surprised.

His fingers tighten in his pale mauve shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, as he rocks forward on the balls of his feet.

He bites the inside of his cheek. "This him?"

Harley glances at Jonathan – he's pale, paler than usual, but he's looking at Joker as if he's finally found some solid competition in the building.

"Never thought I'd hear from you again, Crane," Jonathan flinches at the name from the Joker's red and scarred lips, "But, hey – who am I to judge, right? I come back from the dead all the time."

Harley steps in, Bud and Lou at her heels with their teeth bared at the Joker. He doesn't look fazed.

"Your mutts seem friendly, bunny. And by friendly I mean rabid."

Harley smiles sweetly. "They're extremely friendly."

His grin is wide.

Jonathan's hands clench and unclench. She can hear his teeth grinding.

"Why are you here?" He spits out.

Joker looks like he's been waiting for the question. "Just seeing how my new _partner_ is, and who her boyfriend happens to be." Joker's dark eyes flick to her. "Wouldn't've pegged him as your type, bunny."

Harley knows that's enough. She clicks her tongue and Bud and Lou heel, and with another click they skitter away down the hall to the open door of her and Jonathan's apartment.

"Sweetness," she murmurs to Jonathan, her eyes bringing his to her face. "Would you look after my boys? You know what to do."

She leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth, her breath fanning across his cheek, and he gives her a nod, turning away from the Joker and going after the two hyenas.

Once he's gone, Joker unfolds his arm and waves a hand at the door.

"Where'd you find him, huh? The scrapheap? Did Scarecrow pull a Grundy on Gotham?"

Harley smiles at him, stepping so they each have a wall to lean back on in the thin stretch of corridor.

"I'm not telling," she says. "But I _will_ say that it wasn't pretty, and I've put a lot of work into him. I'd hate for that all to go to waste."

The Joker's eyes crinkle at the corners slightly. "Oh, sweetheart, I think you might've wasted your time already. He looks like he's about to drop dead."

"And if he does," Harley tells him, "I will kill you. His lifespan is directly linked to yours for the rest of our…_acquaintance_."

She can't really read his new expression. "I best keep an eye on him then. Don't want to wake up with you over me, waiting to slit my throat. Although…" His smirk is feral. "I wouldn't mind finding you between my sheets for an entirely different reason."

She laughs, long and loud and terrifying to most people. "You'll never find me wanting to fuck you." She steps up close, so close they're almost nose-to-nose. "I'm _taken_, baby, and even if I weren't, I don't mix business with _pleasure_. And you are most definitely _business_."

Harley doesn't see his face when she walks away and shuts the door on him, but she feels his ice-cold eyes pierce her back like a shank. He wants her.

* * *

><p>There's always a calm, he thinks, in fucking someone. It's not all blazing and quick like most people think it is. There's more than one moment where he can see everything about the girl – her fear, her greed – and sometimes, just for a jolly, he thinks he can even hear the sound of the cash register trilling when he comes.<p>

It's like that with the girl beneath him now, who is a poor substitute for the one a few flights upstairs practicing backbends and flying leaps.

She calls herself Julia – not a typical whore's name, but still the way she said it when he asked made it one – and he wonders if he disgusts her.

She's very nearly a professional, all business, with all her own teeth, but one hell of a habit. He'll be feeding that habit, providing she makes him come in under ten minutes. She's trying hard, writhing and moaning, wriggling like the well-seasoned woman she is, but she's not winning.

He'd thought he would enjoy it – a little fun, a little _release_, and a game she couldn't possibly win, not with his ultimate control – but he isn't.

She's boring. She's blonde and boring. She's slender, blonde, and boring. She's short and slender and blonde and boring.

She's pretty enough for a Gotham street-rat, and she has a funny-shaped birthmark beneath her left tit that he thinks looks like a grim smile, but there's that flash in her eyes that he's called tasty in others' before her.

She's not a professional, because professional whores in Gotham are the ones that are old, tired, run-down and just let the guy get on with it, smoking while he does. They're the ones that no one wants to go near.

Julia here, she's the type he usually seeks out, just for that flash. He likes that he scares her, and he likes that she hates his face. He likes that when she looks up at him, her eyes dart down to his big red smile and the reading points in her face erupt in loathing and horror.

But, at the moment, with the memory of his rogue standing in front of him, so dispassionate about fucking him, but without that flash, that tell-tale glimpse of _what_'s going on inside, all that he usually likes…he hates.

He fucks Julia into the mattress, making the headboard of the bed thud out a staccato on the plain wall. He snarls and he goes at her for the sake of it, because she's scared of him and he wants her to be even more scared.

Julia screams, and it's like the cash register's disappeared from beneath him, because now she's terrified, and now she understands that while he might've picked her up and charmingly promised her money and dope, it doesn't mean he's going to keep that promise.

She screams louder and he hopes the _bitch_ upstairs can hear.

* * *

><p>She and Jonathan are sitting on the couch in quiet contemplation when they hear it: the banging.<p>

"Someone's having fun," Harley murmurs, stroking back Jonathan's overgrown fringe as he rests his head on her lap.

"_Joker_," she barely hears him say.

Harley lets out a breath through her nose. "You can't keep doing what you were doing earlier, you know."

Jonathan lifts his eyes to hers, and they are dark. "_Fuck you_."

She doesn't flinch, doesn't say a word, just removes her hands from his face and stands, heading for his lab. She finds the long-forgotten case of glass vials filled with blue and takes one, going back to Jonathan and uncapping it.

She holds it out to him.

He's sitting up now, pupils blown, teeth bared, skin shiny with sweat. His fingers are curled into the plush couch cushions like talons. She can see his pulse beating furiously in his neck.

She'll put him down if she has to.

Harley remembers the earliest days, when the darkness would consume him and turn him into someone completely different – _this_ snarling thing – and she created the blue shot to keep him calm as he worked through it. This rage is new and different, and she can't help but think that if he doesn't revert soon then she'll have to admit to herself that he's de-evolving with too much stress and change.

He lunges at her, and she twists out of his way, curling her arm around his neck until his struggling stops. He passes out after a few seconds of gasping, falling heavy into her arms.

Harley lays him on the couch, the re-capped blue vial resting on his chest for when he wakes up. She leaves the lights on so he won't be scared, and changes into something more casual for dinner with the Joker.

* * *

><p>She waits with her hands pressed to the stainless steel counter she's sitting on. It's shiny but covered in fresh scrub marks, making her reflection is distorted.<p>

Harley wonders who cleaned, thinking it was probably Judd, just a lackey nobody who was hired to get all the little jobs done, who sits in the corner on a metal stool. He's waiting for the Joker to arrive, just like her, and, she thinks, he wants praise for the meal he's made.

Harley knows it came out of a can, but the broth's hot and thick and there's buttered bread with it. She's hungry, and Joker's keeping her that way.

The kitchen's vast, all gleaming metal and white tiles, except for the table in the centre on which the white china dinner bowls sit. It's dark battered wood, chipped and marked from years of use, and she wonders where it came from. It looks the kind to have gum stuck underneath. The chairs match.

Harley hears him before he opens the door. His footsteps are heavy. He's relaxed.

The white kitchen door swings open to admit the Joker in a dark blue suit. Harley raises her eyebrow at it.

Joker ignores her. "Judd, get us some _refreshments_."

The small dark man's eager to please as he scurries off through the door the Joker's just come through.

He finally notes her expression. "The suit? Just something that was hanging around my closet. Nice to see you made such an effort."

Harley doesn't glance down like an idiot. She knows what she's wearing: skin-tight denims and a sweater.

"I didn't know we were having a tea-party," she tells him, slipping off of the counter and taking her seat at the dinner table.

Joker takes the chair at the other end, half-smile in place. "You'll know _all_ about those, won't you, _Alice_?"

Harley ignores him and dips some bread. Judd returning breaks the silence.

"B-Boss?"

She glances up to see the Joker taking a wine bottle out of Judd's hands as well as two glasses. The guy splits with one look from the painted criminal.

The soft _glug-glug _of wine being poured is loud in the large room. She's never felt small, not since she was in her old room, but the place is so _white,_ so sterile, that it's making her dizzy. The soup keeps her grounded. She rubs a thumb over her wrist as she passes the bread from hand-to-hand.

Secrets keep her safe.

"So." Joker talks and chews. "Bane, huh?"

Harley rolls a shoulder. "He's necessary."

"You gonna fuck _him,_ too?"

She smirks at him. "Who says I haven't already?"

She sees his fist clench. For a master criminal and psychopath, he sure is easy to wind-up.

"Why do we need him for a _bank job_?" Joker asks, lids narrowed.

"Have you got three billion on you right now?"

He just looks at her.

"Didn't think so," Harley mutters, turning the spoon over and over in the soup. "He wants his price for his help up front, and he wants it untraceable. He doesn't trust anyone. If we break him into a bank and he takes what he wants, then we have a deal."

Joker sits back in his chair, the wood creaking. "And the deal is?"

She finishes the bread. "We give him his goods, and he gives me the recipe for something I've been after for a long time."

He says nothing, before tearing into his bread as she finishes her soup. He pushes a wine glass towards her as he eats.

Harley can smell nothing on it but the sharpness of the grapes it was made from. Joker watches her lick the rim of the glass.

"Poison wouldn't suit my needs, sweetheart," he tells her.

Harley pushes away her empty bowl, downs the wine, and shifts so she can sit cross-legged in her chair, a far more comfortable position than the conventional way. She leans forward, a smile on her wine-darkened lips.

"Oh, yeah? What needs are those?"

Joker just tuts. "I don't know about _your_ motives. What makes you think you can ask about _mine_?"

Harley feels her hair settle around her face. She can very nearly see his pupils dilate, but his eyes are too dark to really tell from a distance.

"You want me," she says. "You like my style, you've got a thing for mischievous blondes, and I'm far more bloodthirsty than any other woman you've met. These are facts, baby."

His fingers drum silently against the table. His hands aren't gloved, they're bare, and they are large and long-fingered. He has good hands, as evidenced by the faces he's so skilfully carved in likeness of his own. He cracks his neck.

"I already know your motives," Harley tells him. "What I don't know is your _plan_."

Joker's lips curl. "Oh, you wanna ask me about my plan, huh? If you're so _clever_, then shouldn't you already know? You say I want you. How does a guy get a broad?"

"You mean, a broad _like_ _me_."

A bigger smile. "A broad like you, is right. You're off the fucking scale. I'm tempted not to even call you a woman, but I've seen you naked and I can tell a fake rack from a real set."

"Charmer," she accuses.

"You don't get to where I am without knowing how to work a girl, bunny."

She smiles. "Like the one you were breaking the headboard with earlier?"

He sits back, eyelids half-lowered and a curious expression on his face. "You heard that, huh?"

Harley cocks her head. "I'd be surprised if all the guys in the building weren't banging one out to it."

"And what about you?" Joker asks, though it looks like he's forcing himself to. "Did it get you in the mood to take that dry old Scarecrow for a spin?"

She wonders if Jonathan's awake, and, if he is, whether he's trying to hurt himself for going for her.

"It didn't," she tells him. "But I'll be sure to remedy that later."

Joker's jaw works silently. He looks like he wants to say something else, and, after a long while, he does.

He stands. "Let's just say, _bunny_, that one day, and soon, you won't think being mine is so beneath you." He circles the table. "You think it's funny to show me up, and I like that spirit, but don't misunderstand me when I say that when you're weak, I'll _get_ you."

One fingertip slides down her cheek, before tracing her jaw, and she glances up his lean body to see him smiling. There's a part of her that hates him, that hates _men_, but there's another part, an equally feminine part and something that's just so _her_, that likes the way his black eyes glint at her.

She brushes past him on her way up and out of the room. He was already hard, and she can't help but grin.


	8. Fear Me

Harley's dressed head-to-toe in her usual gear: tightly laced sneakers over striped leggings, with her leather corset and vest top beneath. Except she's not wearing the vest top.

Bud and Lou had been kennelled for making a bed out of her closet, her vests being their main bedding victim. So she's wearing just the corset, and it's chafing, and it's warm, and it's sticking uncomfortably.

But judging by the looks from the boys around her, she looks good sans undershirt. She knows the lack of the layer is showing off the skin of her back, mid-way up her spine to the nape of her neck, and she also knows that if she turns _just so _those onlookers in the right place will glimpse a generous amount of the side of her breast.

Bane's behind her, checking his equipment before they do the East Street Bank. His mask is in place, tinted goggles hiding his eyes, and his superhuman brawn is not very well hidden beneath his plain raincoat. She can hear the soft whirring of his Venom injector beneath it somewhere.

"Ready, _chica_," she hears, and she sees the Joker's jaw clench at the huskiness in the muscular criminal's voice.

She resists a smirk and does her part in the plan, scaling the wall of the abandoned building they stand in to reach the large open window that overlooks the bank. She leaps, catching herself on the ledge of a roof moulding, and pulls up to find her way down into to the top-floor Guards' room.

* * *

><p>As soon as his rogue is gone, Joker turns to that overgrown fucking monkey Bane. The guy might be smart, a <em>genius<em> even, but if he doesn't know to keep his goggles off of her then he's just another stupid fuck to the Joker.

"How long have you two known each other?"

The guys around him are loading their guns, checking their smoke bombs and other gadgets, but he knows they're listening. He doesn't give a fuck.

Bane's eyes are barely visible beneath the red plexiglass of his goggles, but Joker sees them narrow. "A long time," he growls.

Joker shakes off his rage, though he still feels it creeping into his bloodstream. "A long time, huh? She still with the witless wonder back then, too?"

Bane's forehead creases. "The _idiota_? Of course."

"You fuck her?" He asks plainly.

Joker sees Bane's face crease around the half-gas mask, and he knows the hulking mass is smiling.

"You think, _payaso_, just because she surrounds herself with men that she sleeps with them all? She doesn't pretend like most women, or use her body like a weapon. She just plays her part. It's all just flesh to her, as it should be."

He's knows what is and isn't flesh better than most guys, but _her _flesh is different. He doesn't say this aloud, but Bane laughs like he did.

_Keep laughing, you ugly motherfucker._

* * *

><p>His hands are pale, he thinks. They haven't seen the sun in so long. He wants to see the sun, feel it, <em>touch <em>it.

She's his sun, his warmth, how he keeps hold of the earth spinning beneath him while she rotates around him. She hasn't touched him in weeks. He wants her to, but she tells him every time he does he goes nuts, tries to strangle instead of stroke.

He doesn't know if it's true or not. He can't remember after the initial seduction. He can take her hand, touch her knee, kiss her neck, and then he's gone, dead in the dark but with eyes open wide to the nothingness.

His bones miss her. He feels them ache. His tongue itches. He knows he needs to take his medicine. His gums are sore from brushing his teeth. He thinks his breath might be why she won't kiss him on the lips.

She kisses his forehead, his jaw, his ear, his neck, his shoulder, his cheek, his nose...everywhere but his lips, where he wants her the most.

He feels cold. He feels empty. He can't find his medicine. There are teeth glowing at him from the dark, long and dripping with growls coming from behind them. He sees spots.

He knows he's crazy.

He wants the sun, the sun that came to him and scared away the shadows in the alley that time so long ago. But she's not here, she's gone away, and he can't remember when she said she'll be back.

He's hungry. He's hungry for her, the scent of her cunt, the softness of her neck, but he can feel it all slipping away from him, the memory of her.

Something's inside him, stealing his sun, making his breath bad. That's why she hates him, because there's something she can't fix inside him and he knows the only way to get rid of it is to cut it out.

She's been too soft with him, calling him sweetness and letting him taste her own. He needs to cut, cut, _cut_. Then she'll smile again. Then she'll kiss his lips.

He thinks he's in a snowdrift it's so white, but he can't remember the last time the city got snow, it was so long ago, and even then it must have been dirty and grey because he doesn't think he's ever seen snow so white as the snow around him.

It buries his feet, keeps them cold and numb as he treads the broken glass that springs up beneath him, trying to stop him from reaching the knife on the chequered picnic blanket. His stomach growls, but that's not why he wants the knife.

The glass doesn't hurt, but it turns the snow red behind him in a trail as it looses his blood. He wonders if the thing inside of him is already leaking out, but he knows it's strong. How else had she not been able to kill it? She's so clever, so powerful, nothing can defeat her.

He reaches the blanket, touches it to find it hot and wet from the melting snow beneath it, and the knife burns him as he picks it up. He can hear wolves in the distance, howling, _laughing_...

He looks down to find he's naked, his thighs smeared with his own blood. He knows it's the demon inside him, trying to stop him, trying to scare him off from cutting it out.

He barely feels the first slice, the one across his right ankle, he's so numb, but he feels the sting of the second, the one behind his left knee, and the third, the one just above his groin. He spills red everywhere, but then he sees the blackish-brown, _leaking, leaking, leaking..._

He uses the knife feverishly, the metal handle fusing to the skin of his palm with its heat. His body becomes a sacrifice, a work of art, some kind of tribute that will unleash the thing inside of him and take it away, never to be seen again.

The slice across his neck is the worst one. It sprays thickly, dousing the picnic blanket, but when he blinks the gingham's clean and _she_'s there.

"Ha-Harl-"

It comes out in a wet gurgle, spraying a fine mist between them as blood drips from his lips. Her red-speckled cheeks split in a grin, and her grey eyes open up and welcome him inside.

He sees the mud slope off of the picnic blanket, the large animated brownish blob scurrying away from the both of them. He feels light, free, and he knows that it's gone from inside of him.

She kisses his mouth, coming away with bloody lips, one of her hands slipping down her naked body. "Come here, sweetness."

He falls over her, hot and cold as the snow drowns him in her and the knife falls free from his hand.

"I love you." She grins.

He hears the wolves howl once more.

"I love you, too."

* * *

><p>Bane's coveting his cases of bearer bonds and Joker's watching him. The others are standing around and gloating over the bits of sparkle they found in the bank's vault.<p>

Harley's not waiting for a ride back. She simply strolls up to Bane and gives him a long look.

He passes her a folded piece of paper tucked into a creased plastic wallet. "You look after this, _chica_. I'll probably see it on the news."

She knows he's grinning, and she is too.

Harley pecks him on the cheek and dashes off, gifting the Joker with a sly wink as they wait for their transport while Harley swings herself up onto the nearest awning, before leaping up higher and higher.

She's taking the rooftops in her usual way, stretching her body in a way that the easy bank job didn't. She wonders if Jonathan's awake, whether he'll be any better today than the other days that have passed.

She's seen him steadily getting worse with the Joker looming ever closer behind her and the increasing amount of time she's spent away getting her affairs in order, furthering her plans. She's missed him, though she's loath to even _think _it, and she's definitely missed his breath, soft in her ear, whispering things no man has ever even thought to say to a woman before.

But there's a part of her that knows if Jonathan gets any worse the kindest thing would be to kill him herself, put him down before he goes off the deep end and into shark-infested waters.

She clambers down the closest building with these thoughts in mind, crossing the street and using the eye-scanner without really thinking of it. She rides up in the elevator, already undressing before the door is even opened onto her floor.

Their apartment door stands open.

Her corset thrown to the wayside, she takes her BB gun in-hand, palming it as she pushes open the door.

The curtains are all thrown wide, the windows all open with the cold city air rushing in. She can hear Bud and Lou jabbering in their kennels, screeching behind their bars.

Something cold tickles her spine. It tastes like dread.

The TV room is neat, just as she left it that morning, and she can see from where she's standing, with the help of the floor length mirror on the far wall, that their bedroom's in a similar state of normality.

But then she hears the bath running.

Harley turns, hair in her eyes, to see the bathroom door wide open, a pair of pale knees surfacing above the dark red waterline of the tub.

She's already plotting revenge on the _son of a bitch who dared this _when she reaches the door and sees Jonathan, cut to fucking ribbons and gasping for breath, a goddamn smile on his face.

He blinks and he sees her, glassy dark eyes watching her through an obvious drugged haze. His hand hangs over the lip of the tub, a steak knife gripped with white knuckles, and the gash across his neck spurts wetly.

"Ha-Harl-"

Her fingers are shaking. She's been with him too long, he can't go like this.

_Not like this_.

The gun smacks against the snow-white bathroom tiles before giving a pathetic broken rattle. Her hands are on his neck, trying to staunch the blood. He huffs and she knows there's blood on her face from his breath and attempts at words.

Then she sees the other cuts, across his arms, his chest, and lower, down below the rippling red water.

"_Fuck_."

There's glass on the floor from the broken bathroom mirror digging into her knees, and she sees her pink pills spilling out of the medicine cabinet behind the glass. The pink pills that open walls and play out the darkest of nightmares. She only keeps them as a reminder – she's never told him this.

Jonathan's grinning again, his chest rising and falling evenly as if they're on a goddamn beach instead of playing with his life in the bathroom. Bud and Lou are going apeshit down the hall, wailing and howling. It's building into a crescendo, making her heart hammer and then nearly stop when his head lolls limply on his shoulder while he watches and smiles, as if he's trying to playfully tuck and trap her hands beneath his chin.

She can only think of one thing to say. "I'm sorry, sweetness."

It's so little in return for what he's given her, but it's all she has.

She kisses him, his blood rolling down her chin from his lips. Her breath leaves her in a rush.

"I _love_ y'_too,_" he garbles.

She takes her mouth, presses it to his ear, holds his head to hers as she listens to his breathing falter. She tells him nothing, just makes sure that the last thing he hears is her breath, her life.

She can't say she loves him too, she'll never love anyone or anything again, but she cared, and caring costs.

She knows he's dead when the knife clatters to the tiles, once, _twice_... Gone.

Harley hears the tap still thundering out hot water as Bud and Lou stop their singing. She turns it off. The metal's so hot it burns.

Jonathan slips lower into the water, eyes shut, mouth curled, and she looks down as she stands to see her chest covered in his blood, her breasts painted in it from the smeared lip of the tub where she knelt over.

And then a low keening whine from Bud or Lou smashes the silence of the scene.

She breaks out of the bathroom like thunder, tearing up the hall and into their darkened room. They scramble in their kennels, panting, smelling the blood, and she can't stop the scream that forces its way out of her.

"_SHUT THE FUCK UP_!"

She's thunder and lightning and fucking _Zeus_ himself as the two hyenas cower before her, whining as she spits blood at them. _His _blood.

Harley hears him before she sees him, his heavy tread that grows lighter with every footstep further into her domain. He's tensing, he's spotted the blood, and she knows that if he even considers making a joke she _will_ kill him, collaboration or not.

She meets him out in the hall. He glances at her, shirtsleeves up and eyelids narrowed, and then down at the blood that paints her.

She's panting, feeling heavier and heavier with each passing second, and she feels the need to destroy eat at her insides like wildfire.

Joker's dark eyes flick in the direction of the bathroom, and when he looks back she knows he understands the situation. He glances at her belt, notices the lack of it, and turns to leave, but not before sliding his .38 Special onto a side table.

He leaves, the door shutting behind him, and she palms the gun without pause.

She takes to the streets.


	9. Know Me

Zsasz has nothing on Harley, not after three days of consecutive, adrenaline-fuelled bloodbaths. She hasn't eaten, hasn't slept, has only made sure that the anger from Jonathan's death was channelled properly.

And it has been. Oh, has it.

She'd stolen a shirt off of some guy's washing line in the Narrows to cover her bare chest on the first day. That was the same day she took on some thugs looking to rough her up. But was that before or _after_ the mafia guy looking to get fresh?

She can't remember. Too much blood anyway.

But she knows it was definitely the third day, _yesterday_, that she had her realisation. Why is she so angry? Because Jonathan, her sweetness, is dead, of course. Is that the only reason? No. No, it isn't. She's alone now, and she'll miss him.

It takes her time to process things like this that 'normal' people can do in seconds of discovering a dead relative or friend. It takes her pain, and blood, and she's so tired when it comes to going back to see the Joker.

She's lost his revolver somewhere in one of the rundown buildings off of the Narrows, but she knows he won't mind. He's a knife-man, guns aren't really his thing, but she's still bought him a new one off of some back-alley punk looking to make a quick buck.

She approaches their building, stills for the retina scanner, and then trudges inside as the doors admit her, bloody and ragged.

A couple of the boys are leaning against the closest wall, obviously on first watch as the sun is beginning to set beyond the tinted windows of the foyer.

One of them whistles under his breath. "Hot damn. That girl's gonna be the death of me."

She's barefoot, she notices, as she cocks the Glock she snagged and aims it at the one who spoke. The other guy looks on, unimpressed with his cohort, as if he knew better than to say anything to her right now.

"What was that?"

Her voice is rough, unused, and a little gravelly from those cigarettes she had the night before from that dead guy's pocket in room 104.

The guy – tall, fair hair, dark eyes – straightens up. "Nothin'..._ma'am_."

She walks towards him as the other goon slips off to one side, away from the carnage that may or may not occur. It probably won't. She's feeling sleepy.

He swallows. Harley's lip twitches in something resembling a smile.

She grips his balls in one hand and presses the gun beneath his chin with the other.

"You like me like this, huh? _Dirty_? _Bloody_? You wanna fuck me like this?"

He wisely says nothing, his sallow skin turning a strange shade of puce. She presses the gun to his groin.

"If you _ever_ look at me like that again, I'll blow your cock off. Understand?"

He nods, and she steps back, leaving him to slide down the wall a little as his knees buckle. She turns to the other one, who looks even pastier and more worn down than his friend, and thumbs to him.

"Pick him up, would you?" Harley notices the trail of bloody footprints she's leaving across the floor. "And clean those up."

She winds her way down to the kitchen, not really hungry but knowing that if she doesn't eat something soon then she might just drop like a sack of rocks. She doesn't want to see the person she meets inside the bright, sterile room just yet, but Fate? It's a fucker.

"So. Get in some good slaughtering, did ya, sweetheart?"

"What happened to 'bunny'?" She murmurs, crossing to the refrigerator and ignoring how both the Joker and she are so painfully out of place in the Spartan room.

He's only down to his shirt and pants, his shoes tightly laced and his shirtsleeves rolled up, but he looks like he's naked. That's what Harley thinks at least, that the way he's leaning against the table they eat at, hands in pockets and ankles crossed, he looks natural, relaxed, and so very, very naked.

Her back goes up like a cat's, still and straight, and she's so very fucking ready to claw out a certain pair of dark eyes to escape the room. If she has to.

"Oh." He grins. "You like that one, hm?"

Not really, but she won't tell him that 'sweetheart' just makes her think of Jonathan.

She drinks straight from a carton of milk she finds in the door of the fridge and then reaches for the bread and cheese.

"Who the fuck puts bread in a refrigerator?" She asks out-loud. "You know it goes stale faster? Fucking idiots."

Joker makes a sound similar to a choked laugh behind her. "Huh. Well, I got someone to feed your pooches while you were _away_. Had Fred clean up, too."

She just nods, throwing together a torn and makeshift sandwich. "Where is he?"

He doesn't need to ask who. "He's buried out back under two foot of cement."

Harley had known that leaving the apartment to make herself feel better would amount to someone else taking care of Jonathan, but it still stung.

_No_. No, it didn't fucking sting. _Nothing_ stung. He was gone, it had been taken care of, and she could get on with her plans.

She hears the Joker make to move before he actually stands up straight. She watches him from the corner of her eye.

His make-up is smudged, his eyes tearing black and letting it run across the white, and she wonders why he looks like he's been sweating hard when he looks so... Oh.

Harley lifts her chin. "Same one again, or different? You know what? You should just get yourself a live-in whore, or maybe even a girlfriend. Like a normal guy."

He exhales sharply through his nose, his lips parting in their grin to give a toothy smile.

"Listen up, bunny." He takes a full three steps towards her in one second, but she isn't intimidated in the least. "I can fuck who I want when I want, and _when_ you are mine, I will still fuck who I want whenever _the fuck_ I want."

She tears into her sandwich, baring her teeth, and his black eyes glint down at her. She swallows, smiling tightly.

"The thing you don't get, _baby_, is that I'm not going to live at your side, just _waiting_ for you to drop your fly for me."

His mouth straightens. "_I _am in control here. Don't _forget it_."

She leaves before she breaks his jaw, throwing his replacement gun on the table as she passes it by, before barrelling out of the doors.

* * *

><p>She doesn't fuck around anymore, not like she was in the beginning while she was trying to get Jonathan to settle down. No. Now, it's all business.<p>

Her plan is under way in a matter of days, days spent planning and building and eating meals with the Joker. They don't speak except to discuss when she's ready to make her next move: that day is today.

Harley's been in Jonathan's lab all night, perfecting the device that will allow her to finally find the one thing she's been looking for all these long years.

There are three parts to her plan: infiltration, preparation, and the Grand Finale. Infiltration requires the help of the Joker, getting into restricted buildings and _to_ certain important individuals, individuals in the know. Preparation requires no one but herself and the hacking device she took off of the Penguin. The Grand Finale? Well, that's the greatest part of all – and definitely not worth spoiling.

The Joker meets her outside of the building, eyeing her unusual dress. "Where's the skin-tight suit and gun-belt?"

She'll need two costumes today, and the first is the businesswoman façade she's wearing right now. Tall heels and a knee-length skirt, you might think _conservative_ until the split up her thigh reveals itself and you notice the cleavage between the undone buttons of her blouse.

"You said you needed to get into Roberts' office," Joker states, opening the door of the nondescript dark car waiting for them. "Not his fucking pants."

She climbs in and checks her war-paint-less face and her tight, pinned curls in the rear-view from the back seat. The Joker climbs in after her, eyes narrowed with those heavy lids of his.

"I need to get close to him. It's not your concern _how_."

* * *

><p>DA Roberts was easy to get hold of, and even easier to seduce once she was through the initial security, a badge pinned to her chest declaring her a temp in one of his large office-spaces.<p>

He lies, face-down, over his desk from where he'd pinned her after her initial come-on. She'd wiggled out in time to keep from him head-butting her instead of the solid wood of his desk.

Opening her purse, she takes out her new toy. With a high-grade steel syringe attached to the gun-like ejector mechanism, she can fire a microchip inside Roberts' body as fast as a bullet. A microchip which, when activated, will release an electrical signal to every nerve-ending in his body, rendering him completely under her control. This was what she had been after from Jervis, and a few tests on a couple of junkies proved it effective.

And when she's found out what she wants to know, she can activate another mechanism inside the chip, one which will slowly kill him. The particular neurotoxin that will release is thanks to Jonathan, something that he engineered from his original recipe for madness – now, the poison will simply kill instead of torture.

Roberts only jerks when the syringe punches through the nape of his neck, but when Harley activates the chip, his body stiffens with the shock of a few volts.

She turns him over and climbs up his body, kneeling over him on the desk. "Wake up."

His eyelids flicker.

"_Wake up_."

Blue eyes are suddenly trained on her, unwavering, and she thinks it's such a shame that he's a world-class asshole because with his full head of hair and trim physique he could have been a real looker.

"I want to know everything about Project Nemesis."

He begins muttering words, random strings of thought, and, _eventually_, gets to the good stuff.

"_Project...nineties...Gotham...deconstruct...reconstruct...Arkham...abandoned...orphans...training programme...government spies...assassins..._"

"Give me _names_," she growls.

* * *

><p>Two hours later, she's in exactly the same position with Dr Stanovich at Arkham Asylum, except the good doctor isn't dead from an overdose of her untraceable poison like Roberts. Yet.<p>

"Names. Give me names."

The heavily-set, bespectacled Russian grits out name after name, but none of them are ones she hasn't heard. She knows all she needs to.

Harley takes out her phone from the pocket of her white lab coat, her second costume, and enters the code into the program already open. Stanovich jerks, reaching for the puncture mark in his neck, before his mouth parts in a silent scream of agony.

She climbs off of him and leaves the toxin to weave through his body. She makes sure to check every centimetre of the room before she hops the fence and hitches her ride out of here.

And then something catches her eye.

While checking his desk blotter for marks, she sees a corner of paper sticking out from underneath as if it were shoved there hastily. She rips the blotter from the desk, and finds the mother of all secret documents stashes in a hidden hollow.

"Come to _mama_."

* * *

><p>The ride home with the Joker is quiet, the thug driving them only making noise when someone cuts them up or he sees some woman crossing the street that he likes the look of.<p>

When they reach the underground parking lot and park, Joker finally opens his mouth.

"Go inside."

She turns, expecting him to be talking to her, only to find he's staring at the back of the driver's head. The man gets out of the car and goes inside, taking the stairs, no questions asked.

Joker's in his full regalia – purple suit and coat with a deep blue shirt and even darker tie – and his make-up's been freshly applied.

"Take off the coat," he tells her. "It doesn't suit you."

She slips out of the lab coat quietly, wondering where all this is going.

He finally looks her in the eye, and the space in the car seems to shrink a mile, as if they're pressed together, bodily, their faces only an inch or two apart. Joker has this effect, she's found, like he takes up all the spare space in a room just by breathing, and it really doesn't help when she's trying to ignore him.

"Let me in."

She raises an eyebrow. "Want me to spill all my darkest fantasies, huh? Well, I always had this one about doing it in the back of a dark blue Mercedes..."

"You're a smartass, bunny." His grin is feral. "I like that, but what I meant is it's time to clue me in on what's going on in that pretty little head of yours."

"You mean my plans."

"What else?"

She thinks about it for a second, and then decides that it's so close to the end, what does it matter if she lets slip what she's doing? It's all in the works, he can't stop it, and...well, where's the harm in telling him a little story before bedtime?

"Once upon a time, a woman gave birth to a little girl. And she _hated _her."

"I like this already."

"Shh. Like I said, she hated her, a tiny innocent little _baby_ girl. And when the girl was old enough, her mom put her in a programme that was paying big bucks for unwanted children. They locked the little girl up and they force-fed her little pink pills until she was so crazy she didn't know which way was up or down. In fact, she got so confused she used to think she was floating on a sea of white, waiting for a ship to come...

"Then, one day, when she was floating higher than usual, they put her in a room and made her watch a video. It was the same thing day in, day out after that – pills, then videos, then lunch, then _training_, when she got older. _Years_ went by, the girl learning how to run and jump and punch and kill, and then one day, she gets taken out of the lunch-line by a group of boys who've been picking on her, and they rape her, again and again and _again_.

"To the girl, it's not just painful and humiliating and _degrading_, but it's a symbol of her defeat, their _dominance_. So, a few days later, when they start looking at her again in that same way, she doesn't take her pills and she steals a shank from training, and then that night she kills them all. No one knows how she does it, but what she hasn't told them is that while she likes to float on those pink pills, she finds ways of bending her body and climbing the walls like a superhero.

"She _is_ a superhero, and she is wreaking her vengeance. She's still wreaking her vengeance, even after being punished for her kills and trained even harder because of her skill. She managed to escape with some poor sap of a doctor when she was nineteen in return for a little pussy, and now she wants to find the people who took those children, _her_, and turned them into mindless slaves willing to kill for their government with a snap of a man's fingers.

"And now, that little girl, she's all grown up and she _knows_ who did it, who made the pills, kept the kids locked up in Arkham, gave the order to start Project Nemesis, and she is going to reveal _every single_ _last_ one of them, and then..._boom_."

"Anarchy?" He asks.

Harley looks at him, feeling a little lost at how much she's told him and yet so little, no particulars yet but she's sure, in time, he'll get them out of her. If it doesn't all go down before then, that is.

She puts her hand to the door handle. "Anarchy isn't enough. I want _every man for himself_."

Joker watches her leave, the door shutting with an echoing snap, and she can feel his eyes on her all the way across the parking lot. But she misses his appreciative glance.

"Little girl gone rogue... I like that."


	10. Watch Me

The first stage of Harley's plan is complete. The second is nearly through. The third is on the horizon.

After spilling a few of her guts to the Joker in the back of his car, she went straight back to work, only stopping to feed Bud and Lou and then work out for a bit.

She didn't bother sleeping, knowing that the next day was only so many hours away and that there was plenty more to do in preparation for her Grand Finale, and now, as she stands in front of the cream-coloured Gotham News desk, she doesn't regret that decision to not waste time sleeping.

She thinks about the information she has, the weight on her shoulders that will soon be lifted, and palms Penguin's remote hacking device. His machine's all wired up to the Gotham News signal, so all she has to do is tune in at the right moment, the moment where all of Gotham will be sitting down to eat their dinner and flip on the news.

Anchors Tom Harrison and Grace Wilkins sit quietly in the corner, under guard, like the rest of the news crew that had been captured when Harley and the Joker burst in this afternoon. She wonders what the Joker will do to them – she doesn't care and he likes to make a splash. It's a bad combination for their hostages.

Instead of wasting the time remaining, she takes a walk across the warm, brightly lit studio and jogs up the steps to the monitor room. Spider's bright eyes catch hers through his fringe as he swivels back and forth on one of the crew's chair.

"The disc ready?"

He nods.

"How about the passwords? They work alright?"

He nods again. "Just like Croc said. The _G-O-V_'s systems are out of commission indefinitely, as soon as you give me the signal."

"Good." She touches her nose ring, straightens her high ponytail–

"You look hot," he tells her, as if she was looking for reassurance.

"I like you," Harley tells him straight. "Your work's good. Don't make me regret choosing you."

He turns away and looks back at the screens, waiting for her show. She's satisfied with the glint of fear in his eye as he studiously ignores her.

Harley suddenly feels a hand at her back.

"You're on in five," the Joker's distinctive drawl sounds, somewhere near her left ear.

She looks over her shoulder at him. "Good. Make sure there aren't any fuck-ups."

His eyes slide to Spider, who looks like he's suddenly sweating in the bright glare of the numerous TV screens.

"There won't be."

His hand leaves her as he goes to lean against the back bank of computers in the small booth. His eyes momentarily leave Spider to find her.

"Go on, then, bunny."

She strides down the stairs, across the open floor covered in black cables and electrical tape, and twirls her index finger at a couple of their boys to get the cameras rolling. The digital clock across the room reads 5:58 in bright red. The sign next to it lights up as she takes her seat on top of the news desk, the show's theme sounding in the studio – _ON AIR_.

"Good evening, Gotham."

* * *

><p>Rebecca Adler's been sick all day, only managing some thin chicken broth her sister brought over yesterday and put in the icebox for her. She's currently curled up with some aspirin and a glass of water, staring at the bad drama on the TV.<p>

Her boss had been real angry she couldn't make it in on two such busy days, but, hey, what was she supposed to do about it? It wasn't like she caught the thing off of her sister's kids on purpose, was it? Well, he seemed to think so, which is why he'd told her her job won't be waiting for her when she goes back.

She loves her job, being a secretary is just right for her, and it puts food on the table, but sometimes...sometimes it would just be easier if she didn't work for Jeff King. That is, if she did still work for him at all anymore.

Seeing it's nearly six from the clock across her dimly lit lounge, she channel-hops until she finds the news.

The face that appears surprises her. She's young, the woman on the screen, and she's pretty, but she looks sorta punk, what with the ring in her nose and the heavy, black mascara lining her lashes. Her clothes are odd too, all tight, and red and black. She looks like that kid the building across that likes to turn his music up until the whole block's jumping.

Rebecca sniffles under her duvet. "Weird."

The blonde girl's smile is almost alarming. "Good evening, Gotham. Tom and Grace have stepped away tonight so I can give you a special report, you know, one of those _insider_ ones."

Rebecca's ears instantly prick, even though she was already riveted. Gossip is a bit of a luxury for her.

"I know it's usually about gangs or politics, but mine is something different. You know those crazy people that say our government conspires behind our backs? Well, I'm one of those crazy people."

Rebecca sighs, instantly losing interest, and turns over so her back faces the TV and she can fall asleep more comfortably on her couch.

The girl's words still reach her ears.

"What would you do, Gotham, if you found out that the government of this country sanctioned the creation of a programme that took unwanted children and forcefully trained them to become cold-blooded killers?" There's a soft laugh. "You'd say 'prove it or go fuck yourself,' right? I _am_ the proof, Gotham. I lived and breathed patriotism and murder for as long as I could remember until I escaped, and now, it's time for revenge."

Rebecca turns back to the TV, eyes wide, to see the girl clutching a prescription bottle.

"These drugs open up a person's mind. They subdue, and they let some clumsy-fingered fucker to go in and pick at the things they don't like and put in the things they do."

The blonde pops the lid and empties them out onto her palm – they're pink and round, and the camera does a close-up of her palm holding them. A chill runs up Rebecca's spine, and it has nothing to do with her being ill.

"These pills have never been discontinued, never stopped being prescribed to those who didn't make it out of the underground facility beneath Arkham, and there are some of you, watching this at this precise moment, who have these in your possession."

Rebecca throws off the duvet, scrabbling towards the darkened doorway of her bathroom, clutching the sink with one hand as she pulls at the door of the medicine cabinet with the other. Her heart comes to a crashing halt as the girl's voice rings out from the other room, and Rebecca's eyes become glued to the half-empty bottle of pink pills she takes for hypertension.

She grabs them and rushes back to the TV, falling to her knees in front of it. She turns the sound right up, until the girl's voice is all she can hear.

"You are the unlucky ones," the blonde tells her. "Your instincts have been moulded to suit the needs of those individuals, and now they are being repressed with the same drugs that helped to create them, until the moment they are needed to protect this _great country_ from the _enemy._ Do you know what I say to that? I say, lose them. I say, stop taking the drugs, see where it leads you, create your own revenge on those people that destroyed your childhood and treated your brain like a fucking toy."

Something picks at Rebecca's mind, some distant memory of white walls and no baby photos of her in her parents' photo album.

A knock suddenly sounds at her front door.

The pills are still clutched tightly in her hand as she dazedly makes her way to answer the door. Her sister appears in her apartment hallway, looking rushed, and looks up as Rebecca pulls back the rusting safety chain.

Karen's dark eyes – eyes that she'd so often thought were so very like her own – flicker to the pill bottle and then back to Rebecca's face. Karen's expression changes, twisting into something so cold and unfeeling that a terrified prickle sweeps across Rebecca's heated skin.

The unfamiliar click of a gun cocking meets her ears before something else entirely drowns out the noise.

The girl is talking again. "If those names I just released have spurred the officials and agents working in this programme to cover up their secrets _already_, then I have an ace up my sleeve for all those victims facing a gun at this very moment from someone you thought you loved and trusted. This is how they work, people, to _control_ you, and you can stop them by saying three easy words – _I am Nemesis._" A laugh. "Warning: This product is unsuitable for children and can cause mild bouts of murder and insanity. But at least you'll be free, right? At least you'll be _you_. I am the spirit of divine retribution, and I'm here to ruin everybody's fucking day."

The long, low _beeep_ of the lack of a signal sounds from the TV and Rebecca's eyes meet the stranger's, the woman wearing her sister's skin.

"On your knees, hands on your head," Karen tells her, pressing the gun to Rebecca's forehead. "Don't move a fucking inch."

The words roll off of her tongue before she can stop them.

"I am Nemesis."

She doesn't know how she does it, but within seconds she has unarmed her 'sister' and blown her brains out. She sees flashes of light down the blood-spattered hallway, pieces of forgotten memories, and she suddenly knows just how powerful she is.

She has no directive, no commands to follow, she just has _instinct_, and it tells her to do what she _wants_ to do.

She wants to be the spirit of divine retribution too, and she clutches the gun in her hand tightly as she makes her way down to the lobby in the elevator, still wearing her fuzzy, blood-stained, duck pyjamas.

Jeff King's day is about to get a whole lot uglier.

* * *

><p>"Systems are down," Spider says over the studio's PA. "The GCPD's going nuts on the radio. People are getting shot, stabbed. Reporters are trying to air their own segments on different signals. There's some chatter about sending in troops, but the <em>G-O-V<em>'s lines of between-department communication are down."

Harley still doesn't know why Spider won't say 'government' instead of his hushed '_G-O-V'_, but she thinks it has something to do with all that time spent in that facility after he was flagged as a possible threat and/or terrorist. Truth is the guy just has itchy fingers and a mind made for creating trouble.

"They won't bring the army boys in," Joker says as he strolls towards her, where she is still perched atop the desk. "That'll be like _declaring_ their guilt. Nah, they'll lie low, try to cover up, and let Gotham go to hell on a fast train saying something like it's just hysteria gone apeshit."

Harley feels a grin pull at her lips. "Yeah, well, there's no hiding from the faxes and copies of some _incriminating_ documents I found and sent this morning to every news station I could think of. Lists of patients, names of high-ranking officials involved, treatments given – you name it, the press has it."

"And, uh..." The Joker comes to stand in front of her, black lids lowered. "What d'you think the Bat's gonna think of all this?"

"I hope he'll sit back and enjoy it, because there's no fucking way he can clean it all up. This city will tear itself apart, and the country will follow suit."

He taps his fingers rhythmically on the desk beside her, looking every inch a criminal satisfied with a job well done. "Twenty bucks says he'll come after you before the day is out."

"Done."

* * *

><p>It feels a little strange to know her Grand Finale's gone off without a hitch. She's exposed a decommissioned, government-approved, assassin training ground, and she's brought the city that sanctioned it to its knees in only one day with a few bits of tech and some carefully-chosen words.<p>

She sits on their building's rooftop, thinking of those words she had found on a plain piece of paper in Stanovich's desk. She hadn't known there was a single trigger – she'd thought it was going to be specific to each sleeper – and it was sloppy of them, because now look at what it's done. Three words over one broadcast and every man and woman conditioned to kill is doing so until the city crumbles into dust.

Harley knows he is behind her.

"Those words," she mutters, "I felt them. They made me cold."

"I am Nemesis?" Joker asks, shoes scuffing the gravelled rooftop behind her.

The tiny stones dig into her bare, crossed legs as she shivers, gripping the low wall at the edge of the roof just that bit tighter, resting her arms across the rough surface as it comes up to chest height.

He sits on it, next to her crossed arms, obviously not bothered by the sheer drop at his back, and says nothing.

The city is sparkling in hues of yellow and blue tonight, the black sky littered with stars. It is marred by the constant wailing of sirens in the distance, but up here, away from the freshly-released media and re-runs of her 'special report', it seems the same as it always has, like the city's not rotting itself away from the inside.

Harley rests her head on her arms, turning as she does so she can look up at the Joker. He's stripped down to a plain shirt and pants, lazily buttoned, and his forearms are bare once more. She sees the drag marks.

"Does it itch?"

He doesn't look at her. "Sometimes."

"I have something for that," she tells him. "Something to numb the craving. It's what took me off of the pills."

He doesn't reply and she just leaves it. Some people don't want help, and Harley doesn't offer it twice.

He doesn't state the obvious, about how she must be cold in just a tank and shorts or how it feels coming down from something as big as she's just pulled off, he just sits with her for a while, looking out at the city one way while she looks out the other.

Eventually, she glances at her numberless watch, and a smile crawls across her face.

"Pay up."

He glances down at her for the first time, black eyes glinting and a hint of a grin on his scarred face. "Past midnight, huh? What was it? Ten bucks? Five?"

"Five gets you nothing. Ten gets you _something_. Twenty gets you one thing of your choice."

His hand's in his pocket faster than a whore's in her client's. He passes her two rumpled and folded twenties.

Her eyebrow hitches at his misuse of her unusual charity. She'd given him an inch and forgotten that the Joker always takes fifty miles. She fists the notes anyway.

"So, what'll it be, baby?" She asks, knowing full well one of them will be something like sucking him off or getting in his bed, which she'll make sure he knows is off of the menu by pushing him off of the building.

He surprises her by pulling up one of her arms and pressing a fingertip to the pulse in her wrist, running his nail along her indecipherable tattoo.

"I want to know what these mean," Joker tells her, eyes on his finger touching the black marks.

She frowns. "They're..._fuck_... They're secrets, to keep me safe, and grounded."

His face is blank. "More."

She restrains a growl, pulling her arm out of his grip. "They remind me of everything I lost and everything I'm living to _do_."

"Like today?"

"Yes," Harley grits out. "They tell me things I forget sometimes, and then I remember why I'm so fucking_ pissed _all the time, because _she_ took it all away from me."

His lip curls, and he runs a hand through his hair. "'Kay. Good enough. Now, for the other one–"

Harley leaps up and takes up a steady stance, ready to break his nose, glaring at him. "Just fucking say it."

He looks amused as he sits there, elbows resting on his long, bent legs, his face twisted in a never-ending smile beneath smeared and smudged greasepaint.

"I want to know your name."

The first thing that bursts from her is a high laugh. "Didn't you hear? I'm fucking Nemesis!"

He just waits, silent and still on the rooftop edge, until she stops laughing and stares down at him, realising that he actually _wants_ to know. Her mother is dead, what's left of the rest of her family doesn't even know she exists, so what does she care?

He helped her make all this come to fruition, and, sure, he's an asshole, but there's nothing he can hold over her by knowing her name. Still...

"Harley," she tells him, slowly. "Harley Quinn."

The Joker shakes his head. "Harlequin? No, more."

She restrains the clenching her jaw wants to make in frustration at his ability to read people – _including_ _her,_ on occasion – like a fucking cheap, trashy paperback. It infuriates her that he challenges her when she's so obviously even farther ahead of the curve than he is, but she hasn't ever been challenged like this before.

She decides to let him have this one.

"Harleen..._Quinzel_."

It's like a sucker-punch to say that second name, the one inherited from her mother, but she breathes through it and watches the Joker's face transform.

His body loosens and his face relaxes strangely, his lips bearing a smile. "_Harleen_."

And, instantly, at the sound of the huskiness in his voice wrapping around the syllables of her given name, she knows she's made the wrong choice.

_Fuck_.


	11. Want Me

With her life's work – _so far_ – playing out so well in the form of random strings of murders and citizens fleeing the city as riots begin to break out, fires starting in department stores and homes alike, Harley feels like she can relax a little more. She wants to do the things she likes to do as she watches her masterpiece unfold, a masterpiece that took years in the making.

So she robs a few places, getting herself some nice bits of sparkle, and she follows a few trails of the Nemesis rogues she's let loose, and, well, she still has to eat with the Joker, but it's become more of a distraction than a chore now.

She absently wonders, as she plays with the last of the fries on her plate in the sterile kitchen, whether their collaboration is now over because her grand plans are. He disabuses her of that notion instantly, as if he knows exactly what she's thinking.

"What d'you feel like doing tonight?"

He's wearing his normal patterned shirt and tie, paired with his dark purple three-piece suit, and he hasn't taken off his leather gloves to eat. She'd wondered why he'd covered up so much today, but now she knows – he wants to go out.

She sits there in her plain blue jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers, wondering what _he _wants to do.

Harley shrugs. "Don't care."

Joker's eyes narrow slightly as he sits back in his chair, leather gloves creaking, but the effect isn't meant to be menacing, she can tell. He's thinking.

"I wanna take a _stroll_," he tells her.

Her lip curls upwards at the corner. "Survey the damage."

"Mm," he hums, tongue barely peeking out to lick his bottom lip. "Gives me a buzz, bunny. What about you?"

"Sure."

* * *

><p>Her sneakers and his shoes crunch in the broken glass of a thousand windows thickly covering the sidewalk, the office building towering above them just a twisted hunk of smouldering metal now.<p>

"Last night," he tells her one raised eyebrow. "Some pen-pusher turned out to be one of your pink pill brigade. Blew his colleagues _sky-high_."

Harley surveys the other crime scenes around her, listening to ragged-looking cops talking to crying women about moving to a safer city, a city not in the grip of a powerful tide-turn. One of them talks about the underground crime not being so underground anymore, more sightings of Arkham Asylum regulars out and about on the streets. They all completely miss the two walking by them, side-by-side, like a couple of tourists in a foreign but familiar country.

In the distance, she hears thousands of cars trying to make it across the bridge, out and away from her final reckoning. She knows that those people are families, people with things to _lose_, but the rest of Gotham – the criminals, the addicts, and the wealthy – she knows have stayed to see this through.

They just don't know it will never get better. The addicts don't care, the criminals are trying to protect their turf no matter how fucked it is, and the wealthy, well...they're always too blasé and lazy about everything.

Joker points her down an alley, where she can clearly see Croc dragging a fresh kill down a man-hole.

Her nose scrunches, lip twisting at the crunching noise from the sewer as the hulking, scaly mass pushes the poor bastard through. "_Eugh_."

"You know I used to _share_ with that guy, at Arkham?" Joker says, somewhere at her ear, and Harley turns to see his face is black, his expression stormy. "He told me how he was gonna break me. Well, _I'm_ not the one living in a rat-infested, fucking, _shithole_."

His knuckles crack beneath his gloves as he clenches his hands into fists, and she thinks she hears his jaw pop too as he tenses it. She doesn't say anything.

His mood snaps back like an elastic band. He's grinning, turning away from the alley and leading her somewhere else.

"I have an idea."

* * *

><p>His idea shows itself in the form of a strip joint called Lucky's owned by Carl Jensen, a back-alley pervert with a fetish for wasting, drug-addled women. And the only reason they were allowed past the front door?<p>

"Hey, Carl! How's that last lot I sent you?" The Joker asks loudly over the rumbling music the naked redhead on stage is dancing to.

Harley's been to these places before, but only for recon on a few sources, statesmen and the like, never for her own kicks or cash. She knows it's the only work some of the women grinding on the laps of the twisted rich bastards and new-money rats can get. She should pity them, but she mostly wonders how much they drink to sleep at night.

Carl Jensen is a normal-looking guy – fair-haired, tall, lanky – but his eyes are small, piggish, and totally black. He likes to chew on those little red straws barmen put in cocktails, and his top pocket is full of them even as he chews on the end of one between his lips.

"Eh!" He holds out his arms from his barstool as they approach. "Man, I ain't seen ya in forever, and, yeah, those chicks ya send? Great, man, just great. You keep 'em comin' my way, y'hear?"

Joker's grinning, but the set of his shoulders tell her he's not here for a social visit. Jensen's eyes slip from him, to her.

"Who's this?" He asks, jutting his chin.

Joker slips his arm around Harley's shoulders and she fights the urge to shake him off and punch him in the fucking throat. She wants to see what game he's playing, but it's difficult when he's so close and she's so... No. Never. She will never want him. Not like that.

She ignores the heat flashing up her spine and instead focuses on Jensen's sudden appreciative gaze, currently fixed on her concealed chest but slowly roving down.

"This here's _Sasha_," Joker says smoothly, smirking. "Just a little something I picked up and wanted to see entertain your..._fine _establishment."

"Always were one for a show, weren'tcha?" Jensen smiles but looks suspicious. "No other reason?"

"Well," Joker drawls. "If you could see your way to alerting K.C. there's a fresh one for him, I think he'll appreciate the..._heads up_."

Jensen nods. "Sure, but...uh, you know, no blood in the bar, alright? He never leaves a girl alive, but he's a regular. No cryin' over spilt milk, y'hear?"

He's eyeing Harley like it's the last time he'll see her breathing and he shakes his head at her.

"Can't believe you're up for it, but you do get some strange ones around here," he says to her.

Her grin, she knows, is wild. "I am pretty strange."

Joker's arm briefly tightens around her shoulders. "Anywhere my little chickadee can get ready for her _big _performance?"

Jensen points out a door across the bar with his straw. "You can take her back there. She'll go on in thirty. He might show, might not. Depends on who he's come across today."

"That boy sure does have an appetite!" Joker says gleefully as he pushes her towards the door.

Harley opens it to see a ratty backroom with a table of spirits, a stained couch, and a long mirror. The only light comes from a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, and it throws the cracked floor tiles underfoot in sharp relief.

Joker closes the door behind them.

"So, I'm doing a show, am I?" Harley queries, turning to see he's leaning into a steamer trunk by the door.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "Think of it as a bit of foreplay for us, bunny."

She laughs. "And what if I say no?"

"Looks like Carl and Croc are gonna be disappointed."

She cocks her hip and crosses her arms. "What do I get out of this? You're going for revenge on Croc – what's my motivation? I'm the one he'll be snapping at."

"Diamonds? Rubies? _Cash_?" He pulls out some leather and then throws it back in the trunk with a sneer, still searching. "What is it you want to hear?"

"I want you to tell me why I'll _enjoy _it. Hell, that's the only reason I'm doing anything anymore."

Joker turns so she can see his eyes, and they are _dark_. "_Enjoy _it? Didn't I already say about the foreplay?"

She hums. "Yes, you did, but since I'm not crawling in your bed tonight, I want another reason."

"I don't need to give you a reason," he laughs, striding towards her, something clutched in his hand. "You'll like it." Joker leans in, so his hot breath washes over her face. "Elaboration? I'm going to kill him, and you? You like blood, whether you _know it_ or _not_. You'll _enjoy_ seeing him spill all over that fucking stage. Just like Carl said, _we _enjoy a show."

He brings one hand up to her neck, one leather-covered fingertip brushing her pulse, before dropping it and raising his other hand to hold out that something she'd seen a flash of just before.

She laughs at the colour.

Joker's eyelids fall heavily and his face splits in a grin. "Like I said, _foreplay_."

He's persistent, she'll give him that much, and even though he's wrong about the blood and right about the show, she'll go along with it. What else has she got to do anyway?

She smiles, pressing a hand to his chest and pushing him towards the couch. "Sit."

He does, heavily, legs spread, ankles crossed, and fingers laced behind his head. She thinks he looks like he's trying hard to be seen as nonchalant, but Harley knows better.

He _wants_ her, and despite her lack of enthusiasm at going to bed with him at this particular time, she always loves a tease. He thinks he's on top. Well, it's time for a wake-up call.

* * *

><p>Joker's a man who likes a little sparkle and spin – a little <em>flash<em> – and while Harley is unreadable most of the time and infuriating the rest, he appreciates her willingness to just..._go_ with it.

Another woman might storm out upon being told she's going to strip for a club of twisted strangers, but not his rogue. No, she takes what she's given and she brings it up straight that she'll do it if he answers her challenge.

_That_ had been easy. They're alike Joker and Harley, and while he's not getting much of anywhere with her _physically_, they've been getting on well enough for him to know her real name.

She's letting him get close, and while a part of him is suspicious, the rest of him is growling in triumph. Especially now. He's already seen her naked, but there's always something much more _delicious_ about a broad still clutching to some semblance of modesty.

He wants to see her _shake it_, and as she stands in front of him now, in her street clothes, smirking sinfully, he doesn't know how much longer he can wait before she's _his_. He's so close.

_Patience_.

But that wicked little smirk, it tells him he's about to be tested.

_Try me, bunny_.

She puts the skimpy costume he gave her between her teeth and tugs her t-shirt over her head. Her blonde hair falls around her face in red-tinged tufts, like she's already had a bloody fight.

He grins.

Her jeans go next, the sound of her zipper falling vibrating deep in his belly. His balls tighten as she drops the denim around her ankles and kicks them off. She toes off her sneakers, until she's simply left wearing a striped leotard he thinks he might've seen before.

"I was working out earlier," she tells him, voice husky.

Her nipples are hard beneath the red and black lycra, and the fabric is cut high on her hips. He sees a hint of her cunt. He wonders if his eyes are as black as they feel.

The leotard stretches as she pulls at the straps, turning to look over her shoulder at him as she rolls it down. The way her red lips fall apart, the line of her flawless cheek... He feels a growl well inside him.

She shows him her back, her spine, spreading her legs and bending to give him the _perfect_ view of her ass as she rolls the leotard over it, the edges cutting into her white skin.

He bites the inside of his cheek when he sees the skin and muscles he saw before, tight and silent and deadly. The pale hair covering her cunt entrances him. But he wants to see that stomach again, _feel _it this time...

"Turn around," he grits out as she steps out of the leotard around her ankles.

She ignores him, pulling the other costume over her head and tying up the purple bikini top, before slipping into the skin-tight matching skirt. He grabs her wrist and tugs her to him.

He bares his teeth, hungry for the taste of this predator he managed to ensnare on that rooftop. She retaliates accordingly.

She presses his wrists into the back of the couch until they feel like they might break and shoves him down so she can sit astride his lap. He relishes the pain in his hands and the feeling of blood rushing to his cock.

He could snap her neck if he wanted to, but he's sure she'd find a way to _wriggle_ out of it.

Her blue eyes look down at him as her hair falls around them, soft, the blood-red ends just tickling his white, painted face. He smells apricots on her skin, just that hint of leather, and a fuck-load of confidence – her smile is dripping with it.

She glances down, and his eyes follow hers. He finds her bare cunt so close to where he's straining hard against his pants, and his skin prickles at her sudden, soft laugh.

She dips her head and presses her nose into his neck. Her nose ring is cold against his pulse as she breathes him in, and he has to repress a shiver.

The girl doesn't know what he wants to do to her. Occasionally, he'll admit, even _he _isn't sure.

His rogue pulls back, eyelids lowered as she looks down at him. A shout from outside announces the arrival of his anticipated guest.

Her expression is...odd. She looks curious. Joker wonders if he'll ever know what's going on inside that pretty head of hers.

"Maybe," she mutters to herself, before rolling off of him and pointing to the door. "Go on then. I'll be a minute. Gotta _pick my tune_."

He shrugs her off and straightens his suit, trying to brush the incident off without trying too hard. He wants her, but he'll be damned if he begs her for it. She'll come to him soon enough, and when she does, he won't hesitate to bring her down to his level _for good_.

Until then, he'll deal with her teases and enjoy the show about to begin.

"Something _catchy_," he tells her, smirking, before opening the door and closing it behind him.

Croc is already at his regular table – the one with blood stains and claw marks on it – and when Joker appears from the room, the atavist-suffering green giant grins a sharp and toothy smile.

"Still haven't smashed your bones, have I?" He hisses as Joker approaches.

He shakes him off with a wan smile, going to his own table across from Croc. "And don't you think I'm disappointed about that."

Croc snarls at the sarcasm. "You here for the girl, too?"

"Girl? I'm just here for the next act – she's _my _little pretty for the night."

Croc's anger turns into amusement and he laughs loudly. "_Yours_."

_Hook, line, and sinker. Stupid motherfucker_.

A song suddenly starts, booming over the PA system, and the lights dim. Jensen's putting on a good stage for Harley to show off on.

He can feel the bass scratching his sternum, and as his rogue comes up on stage, the song kicks into high gear. Only she would choose a track with screaming in it.

With one eye on Croc and the other on her tight, little ass _grinding_, he lets himself enjoy the show. She does the typical striptease, but when she throws in an impossible bend or a contortion that would make any other woman's eyes water, every guy in the place goes wild. Especially as she does a backbend, undoing the bikini top and shaking her tits while still grinning at them all upside-down.

Croc, who had looked wary of the clown for the first five minutes, now sits forwards, both eyes on Joker's girl, growling as she makes love to the shiny pole on stage.

All the boys sit forward, unlit cigarettes hanging from their gaping mouths as Harley's lips shape the screams on the track. Joker sees Croc begin to get restless, and he's not the only one.

Joker's plan had been on the spur of the moment, but this, watching Harley being fawned over...fuck, he wants to feel her skin beneath his gloves. He needs to get this forgotten revenge over with and her between his sheets.

She's executing an impossible move, twisting upside-down on the pole, when it all goes to shit. Croc throws over his table and barrels through the crowd gathered in front of the stage, obviously deciding he's seen enough. He throws one huge arm around Harley, dragging her off of the pole, and throws a huge, fucking smile to the Joker as he drags her behind the red curtains to the side of the stage.

Joker's up on his feet, all black rage with a cold blade in his hand, when there's an inhuman roar, a booming thud, and then Croc's bloody head rolls out from behind the curtain, spraying thick blood across the black laminate of the stage.

Harley struts out, skirt ripped, neck and breasts covered in dark blood, glaring fucking _daggers_ at him. "Son of a _bitch_. _This_ was your idea?"

He wants to tell her no, but he thinks it wise to just shut the fuck up and not antagonise the bloody, murderous-looking woman in front of him – the one clutching a blunt machete he thinks probably belonged to the late _K.C_. Even though it would be _fun_ to wind her up, and he _really _wants to...

The Joker shrugs and grins. "Heads up!"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note<strong>: The strip club idea came from Brian Azzarello's 'Joker'.


	12. Feel Me

"_Heads up_," Harley growls to herself.

She's pissed, and her usual routine of taking her frustrations out on her gym kit isn't doing anything to steady her frayed nerves. The Joker's 'plan' was bullshit, and because of him she was nearly unprepared to take on that big lug face-to-face.

Luckily, she'd seen the machete tucked in his pants, or else it wouldn't have been his head rolling and, she's sure, he'd still be digesting her right now.

It doesn't irk her that the Joker put her in danger – what does _she _care for risk? – but it was just so...so _stupid_, so ri-goddamn-diculous for him to just sit there and let his idea go to shit and have her clean up the mess.

_That_'s what's pissing her off as she growls through backbends and tumbles: he's treating her like his _lackey_, and Harley isn't anyone's call-girl.

Bud and Lou are off to the side, watching her climb the ropes hanging from the ceiling with their heads on their front legs, lazily eyeing her gymnastic feats with seasoned gazes.

She's practicing her mid-air splits, trying to forget the cold, scaly, clamminess of Croc's claws on her skin, when she hears her babies begin to snarl. Following their line of sight, she finds the Joker leaning against the doorframe across the vast, varnished floorboards of her gym.

The cream-painted brick walls light up his greasepaint-less skin, his natural tone looking healthier than she knows it actually is. His scars though are still an angry pink, even in the soft sunlight falling through the high windows.

His eyes are bruised-looking, shadowed, and he sucks on the inside of one scarred cheek as he eyeballs her spread legs. He doesn't say a word, his eyes soon flickering back up to her face.

"Got a feeling," he says, ignoring Bud and Lou growling in the corner, "you're not too happy with me."

He doesn't look like he gives a shit, and so Harley chooses to ignore him. She continues her exercises, seeing how quickly she can swing from one end of the room to the other, using only the ropes marked with blue tape, which there are the least number of.

It's not so all-consuming as to allow her to not hear the Joker's next words.

"Don't really think you've got a right to be mad, bunny."

She grits her teeth in a snarl and drops sharply, only catching herself on the wall bars before throwing herself across the room and at his feet, practically fucking _hissing_.

"You stupid _fuck_!" She spits, feeling Bud and Lou appear instantly at her heels. "Do you really think you can just _do that_ to me and expect me to have a goddamn parade? I am not a skank at your beck and call. You want fun? We can have fun. But if you want some piece of pussy to warm your bed and take all your falls for you, you've got another thing coming."

Her sweatpants are thick and uncomfortable against her skin. Her tank is sticking to her stomach with sweat. Her hair falls in her eyes so his face is cut in two by bright red. His eyes look green in the sunlight.

His smile is blinding.

"Oh. That's _all_? I thought it was something serious."

She scoffs, turning away and grabbing her towel from the floor to dry herself off. "When are you ever fucking serious?"

His hand comes over her right shoulder, squeezing. "I was pretty serious yesterday, huh? Wasn't I? When you were _squirming_ on my lap, trying to make me bite your line."

Lou snaps at the Joker's heels, but the clown doesn't budge.

"Call off your pups," he tells her, his other hand inching around her waist. "Let's have a...little _replay_, huh?"

She shakes him off, scowling. "Fuck you. I told you. It's not going to happen."

His smile drops. His face turns cold. He smacks Bud across the muzzle when the hyena goes for his bare fingers.

Harley defends her babies the only way she knows how: by throwing a punch for them. Her fist lands directly on the Joker's jaw, and, for a second, as he's falling to the floor, she thinks she might have hit him hard enough to knock him out cold.

"_K.O._" She grins.

His eyelids flicker. "Not quite."

His leg snaps out, catching her behind her heel. Her knee buckles, but she crouches and turns just in time to stop her fall. Before she knows it, she's crouched over him, and his hands force her down until they're in a somewhat familiar position.

His expression isn't as friendly as when she gave him that striptease though.

"You want a fight?" His fingers dig into her hips. "You'll get yourself one."

Harley throws a hand out to stop her babies as Bud and Lou stalk forwards, their teeth dripping. She halts their approach, gazing down at the Joker and wondering.

"What's this about for _you_?" She asks, and his eyes narrow as he grips the back of her neck and brings them face to face.

"I thought you'd never ask," he murmurs, slow and dark. "You wanna be a free agent, right? A _rogue_. You don't want to be tied to the likes of _me _forever. Well, tough _fucking_ luck, because you are. We made an agreement." She feels the tip of a blade against her side. "I don't tend to forget those, especially not when you've got something I want."

She tenses. He continues.

"You make things fun. _I like that_. But you forget who's in charge, and that...that ticks me off, bunny. If you knew..." He licks his full bottom lip, glancing at hers. "If you knew what I can give you, what you can feel, you'd never look back."

"You want me sooner rather than later," she concludes. "Well, fucking _fine_. Have me. Let's get this shit over with and we can go back to only seeing each other when we're on a job, okay? That's all you want anyway: one quick taste of something you like the look of to get it out of your system."

He smiles at her like she's three years old and has just said _the cutest_ thing.

"Giving up?"

"No," she says, pushing away his hands and pulling her tank over her head. "Getting it over with."

The Joker doesn't look pleased, but why should she give a fuck? She's giving him what he wants.

She grips the knife in his hand and slices cleanly through his leather belt. His raised eyebrow sends a flicker of heat down her spine that she ignores.

Harley tugs off her sweats, leaving him for a moment, before throwing herself back over him and undoing his fly. She's angry, and, for some reason, she's _beyond _horny.

She tugs down his pants, leaves his shirt, and finds him already hard in his shorts. Harley wraps her hand around his cock, finding him warm and smooth, and pulls away his layers to get better access.

He's not that perfect size, not like her sweetness was, but he's big enough that she's sure she'll feel _something_.

She climbs over him dispassionately, settling her thighs against his hips, and braces herself against his chest. He's surprisingly warm beneath her hands, even through his shirt, and it takes the edge off of the situation.

She'd said before that he's just fabric and smear, and now, without that white paint and purple suit, well, he's just flesh and scars. Like her.

She's had plenty of fucks with people she hates, and they've all been the same: get it over with and get out. This will be no different.

It's the same as any other fuck, maybe that little bit sweeter since she knows he won't want any more after this – he just wants to feel like he owns her, and why not let him have that security? Why not let him think that she won't jump at the first chance to be rid of him?

She had thought in that room she had dressed in for her little 'show' that maybe – _maybe_ – she could learn to get along with the Joker in a more _specific_ capacity. But he isn't someone she can care for, not long-term like Jonathan, and though she isn't capable of love or anything remotely resembling it, she is capable of wanting comfort.

The Joker is not comfortable. He pisses her off.

He might have resources she doesn't and access to more dirt than Vicki Vale, but he's an annoying fucker that just won't _quit_. And this is the only reason why she stops.

Well, that, and he's looking up at her, lip half-cocked in a smirk, his eyes all-knowing.

"_Giving up_?" He asks again, and this time, she really does question herself.

She's ready – _so _ready – but for once in her life, this feels incredibly _wrong_. This isn't just some transaction of sex for freedom. This is the one man who can get under her skin _challenging _her to just _do it_, and...she can't.

_Not like this_.

He looks up at her, his eyes half shut, his tongue wetting his reddened lips before a half-grin stretches them. His fingers creep up her spine, warming her skin in fiery trails as he maps her hips and sides, before finding her stomach and stopping.

One nail traces the oval of her navel, while his other hand lies flat above her hip bone. She feels her blood rush through her, its heat surfacing, as if it knows he's waiting for some sign of her complicity in the act they haven't yet committed, waiting for some signal of her being affected by him.

And she is, she'll admit that, but she doesn't have to like it or even acknowledge it.

Harley shakes him off, lifts herself up and redresses, only turning back to look at him when she hears the short, sharp _zip_ of his fly being done up. She thinks she knows what he'll say next, but his words are a surprise.

"How about dinner and a show?"

* * *

><p>Harley, though well-travelled and experienced, has never been to the kind of event the Joker is currently driving her to.<p>

Oh, she's been on the arm of a congressman before, purely for aesthetic reasons on his side and nefarious on hers, but he only showed her off to his social circle at a fancy dinner before taking her back to his penthouse to fuck her blind. His words.

He didn't get the chance.

The dress she's wearing is foreign to her, burgundy-red and sleeveless, a pale pink stripe down the side of the skirt, the layers of thin gossamer glistening under the streetlights of Gotham City as she sits in the passenger seat of the Joker's blue Benz.

She glances at her reflection in the window by her side to see her dark lipstick hasn't faded at all from dinner and her eyes are still cleanly rimmed in deep purple. Her hair is neatly pinned to one side, even in the small amount of time she'd had to get ready, and the red is hidden beneath the blonde.

The Joker's gone all-out in a black tux and Gucci dress shoes, only his purple bow tie giving a nod to his other persona. She doesn't see why they've gone incognito, the Joker giving her this dress to wear and advising her not to 'turn spider-monkey' in the opera house, when it's so obvious who _he _is and, she supposes, herself, especially after that interview. She also wonders why he's driving them himself.

He's pressed nude powder to the scars on his face and the shadows under his eyes, but she can still see the ridges of twisted flesh as the lights of Gotham illuminate his face from a certain angle.

She hasn't bothered asking him why he's taking her to see Puccini's _La bohème_. Their dinner had been quick, the Joker snapping his fingers for service and eyeing the waiter with a shrewd glare as the tall, dark-haired man did the same before serving them. Really, she just hasn't had an opportunity, but that wouldn't have stopped her if she was _truly_ curious.

She's not. She thinks she knows what's going on. He's nearly had her, he thinks he's close, and now he's going that extra mile to get in her pants. Well, if it gets her a free fancy dinner and a few hours spent listening to the renowned Gotham Philharmonic, then she doesn't mind a bit. Let him do what he will.

The gothic, stone opera house looms ahead, and soon enough they are stopping and stepping out of the car, taking the soft red carpet up to the old building's gilded, open doors. The valet takes the keys from the Joker's gloveless hand and says nothing to the couple as he gives them a stub before taking the car away.

It seems, in a time of political tumult and criminal crisis, with only the desperate and the wealthy holding their ground, no one takes any notice of the main perpetrators going to take in a show.

Though, Harley notices, there are plenty of burly men with gun-bulges standing about the street and the foyer, and, she'll bet, covering every entrance and exit to the place.

The Joker takes her arm in a cool grip and leads her to the little, smiley blonde at the front door.

"Jackson Hartley and _wife_," he murmurs, his eyes catching Harley's for a moment.

She almost smirks.

The woman is oblivious enough to not take any notice of their obvious displacement from the wealthy crowd in the foyer, drinking from champagne flutes and nibbling little crackers, but smart enough to look a little wary of the Joker's dark gaze.

"Yes, Mr Hartley. You're on the list. Go right in."

He says nothing as he walks Harley through the crowd, turning her expertly through the churning of rich people dressed in fine outfits and lifting a couple of glasses of golden fizz from a silver tray as they go.

Harley is soon squirreled away to some quieter corner near the closed ticket office, overlooking the entire affair from a few short steps up out of the throng. The Joker drinks his champagne and watches them along with her, like some science project about to turn dangerous.

"Why are we here?" She finally asks. "Am I meant to go on stage and take all my clothes off again?"

He gives her a sideways grin, eyes raking her dress. "Bunny, if that was the case I would have driven you here naked. We're just here to enjoy the evening like the other half do, and silently wonder why they haven't spotted us odd men out yet. They can usually smell a rube a mile off."

"I was born downtown."

"Doesn't make a difference to them. They're all about the _green_."

"Well." Harley eyes his hair, which looks remarkably dark and tame slicked back, with no hint of his usual dye at all. "You aren't tonight."

"I like to _blend_ sometimes," he tells her, his face edging closer to hers, his mouth at her ear as his free fingers travel up her arm. "I like being like this, with you: a couple of wolves in sheep's clothing."

Her lip curls in a smile. "You like knowing how oblivious they are, how you could easily throw their lives out of balance just by revealing yourself."

"Mm. This isn't about power. This is about _fun_."

"I can't agree enough," a strangely familiar voice comes from beside them, and they both look up to see a regular Gotham socialite before them.

Harley wants to laugh as Bruce Wayne, dark and handsome, steps up towards them, offering his hand to the madman at her side. The Joker takes it.

"Hartley. Jackson Hartley," the Joker offers, dark eyes looking so very focused and intense before he leaves Wayne's grip and takes hold of Harley's waist. "This is my wife, _Sasha_."

Harley wants to scowl as that name makes a reappearance, but instead she just smiles flirtatiously at the infamous ladies man and rich business tycoon. Wayne's done many televised press conferences on bringing down crime in Gotham, re-runs of which Harley's watched with Jonathan before, eating Chinese and smirking at the wealthy man's pathetic attempts.

He tries to inject money into the right places, giving tech to the right people and food and safety to those that need it, but she knows it has never happened quite like that. The rich condemn him for helping the poor, and the poor hate him for making it worse on them, unknowingly giving their hope to the criminals of Gotham and allowing them more hold over the addicts and downtrodden on the city's streets.

Harley wonders if he knows the damage he does by interfering, but expects the answer is in the negative – he seems as obtuse as the rest of the men and women milling just beyond them, _chatting_ like the city's not crumbling beneath their heels.

"A pleasure." Wayne smiles, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles – the gesture is oddly genuine. "I couldn't help but overhear what you said, Mr Hartley. It's nice to see someone here for the opera instead of the business talk."

The Joker doesn't have a chance to reply as another joins their group. This time, the person is more unwelcome and even more familiar.

"Selina," Harley greets coolly. "What a surprise."

Selina Kyle takes her place next to Bruce Wayne, passing him a glass of champagne as she sips her own, her red lips kissing the crystal rim. Selina's bright eyes, framed in black, scan Harley shrewdly.

Wayne looks curiously at her. "You know Sasha and her husband?"

Selina's smile is wicked as she finishes her sip, licking her lips. "Oh, yes. _Sasha_ and I go way back, but the husband's new. Last I heard, you were settling down with that old sack of _straw_."

Harley flashes her teeth in a grin. "And I heard your career had been put on _ice_."

Selina's mouth straightens and her eyes narrow. "You know how it goes – one day you're all _locked up_ and the next you're soaring _free_. Tell me, how is Pamela?"

Harley feels her fist clench at her hip behind the skirt of her dress. She's known Selina for years, even foiled a few of her jewel heists after the bitch had put away Poison Ivy in Arkham for the foreseeable. Catwoman and Ivy had concocted a plan to get into a private vault they both wanted something from, only they'd been caught and Selina had escaped, leaving Pam to _rot_.

Poison Ivy had been the only woman Harley had ever trusted to have her back in their own collaboration days, when Harley had still been just a sapling looking for answers to why she'd been abandoned and her brain played with. Pam had been the only person she had ever lived with before she'd found Jonathan. Ivy had been a mentor in some ways.

Harley had always tried to make Selina pay for locking Ivy in the dark. Selina's last scheme had been to relieve Mr Freeze of his diamond collection, but sadly an anonymous tip-off had gotten her caught red-handed.

"She writes," Harley tells her, teeth gritted. "Mainly about her children. You know, she's anxious for you to meet them. Especially now they're teething."

"I'm sure she is," Selina purrs in a smooth and quiet tone, beginning to lose some of the pretence. "You two still carrying on your little love affair? I had no idea you were such a hybristophiliac, although..." Her eyes slide to the Joker, who is standing with Wayne, both of them watching the scene quietly unfold. "Seeing is believing. What's your score now – ten?"

Harley steps in close, the edge of her dark dress and Selina's white, gauzy gown rustling as they brush each other.

Harley smiles like the crazy bitch she is, whispering, "Don't go down this road, honey. Because I will tear your fucking throat out."

Selina watches her from beneath her carefully coiffed bangs, before letting out a soft _hmph_. "Always were one for action rather than _talking_, especially with the boys."

"You're one to talk, Selina." Harley looks at Bruce Wayne, who is now conversing with the Joker, who looks like he's plotting. "Wayne? Really? The angle's so obvious it's two blocks wide. How much are you trying to squeeze out of him?"

"Some pearls, of course," the brunette huffs, but Harley catches a little flash of something in her dark eyes.

Harley grins. "You love him, don't you?"

"Of _course_ not," the other woman drawls, but it's too late.

Harley can't help the wicked laugh that leaves her lips. "You do! Oh, this is _precious_. Shall I tell him who you really are, and what you really do? Shall I tell him who you've fucked to get what you want?"

"Oh," Selina tuts. "You think you're so clever, so _righteous_,with your little stunt on the news. Well, should I alert the appropriate authorities and tell them where you are?"

"Go ahead. I'll cut you before you can even blink."

This time it is Selina who laughs. "Oh, _Harley_, always such a gas!"

"Harley?" Bruce Wayne interrupts, obviously returning to the conversation once more.

Selina grins at him. "I meant _Hartley_, of course. Just a little slip."

He nods. "Of course. Well, shall we? I've invited Jackson and Sasha here to sit in the box with us."

Harley thanks him, touching her hand to his arm and watching Selina's eyes flame at the blatant display of flirtation. The Joker doesn't look pleased either. The crowds disperse into the theatre and Harley and the Joker take up the rear, Selina and Wayne leading the way in front of them up a set of crimson stairs to the private box.

"Do I want to know?" Joker mutters in her ear.

"_Meow_," Harley murmurs, and the Joker's eyebrow twitches in interest.

"Hm. Always liked the Kitty-Cat's style."

Harley smiles sweetly. "Then why don't you go bother _her_."

They enter the box, behind two rows of four red velvet seats, and the Joker's grin is wide and white in the gloom. Someone on the curtained stage below announces a slight delay.

"I think I'll do just that," he says, as Wayne leaves Selina to lean on the edge of the balcony and overlook the crowds.

He orders some drinks from the server at the open curtain to their box. The Joker begins a low conversation with Harley's most disliked acquaintance.

"Have you ever been to the opera before?" Wayne asks her.

Harley shakes her head. "No. My husband was kind enough to bring me tonight, in light of everything that's happening in the city. It's safer to be amongst..._friends_."

His reaction is the one she had intended: informative. "Of course. Awful times. You know, my company's working on some way to help all those people affected by that..._woman_."

"Way?"

Wayne nods. "Some kind of...psychotherapy. It's obvious she found some way to affect all those normal people. As if the government could be responsible for anything like that."

Harley grits her teeth and says nothing. Luckily, the server reappears in his white uniform with a tray of champagne glasses. They each take one, and then, once again, Harley is faced with Selina while Wayne talks to the Joker, who's looking at the other man intensely again.

"So," Selina says nonchalantly. "Who is he, anyway? A nut? I could see those scars _without _my goggles."

"What did you two talk about?" Harley asks back instead.

Selina sniffs at being ignored, but answers anyway. "He asked me whether I've ever been to _Lucky's,_ wherever _that _is, and if he'd see me there sometime."

Harley's sudden half-cackle catches the Joker's attention, and seeing Selina's confusion and Harley's shit-eating grin, he smirks back at her.

"Who is he?" Selina asks again, drawing back Harley's attention, and she can't believe she _doesn't know_.

"Who's the one man, do you think, that could trap me into working with him?" Harley asks, and Selina's eyebrows rise, because they might despise each other but they both know the other is _smart_.

A light of recognition dimly shines in Selina's eyes before she glances between the Joker and Wayne, and back again.

"Uh-oh."


	13. Kiss Me

There's something, the Joker thinks, about this guy – _Bruce Wayne_ – and it's not the fact his cologne smells like the billions of dollars he's worth, but something more intangible, more...well, untouchable. _Secret_.

And secrets, he knows, are his rogue's speciality.

So he shakes the man's hand, talks to him like one rich guy might talk to another, but all the time he wonders what's painted on the inside of his skull. What makes _this_ guy tick?

And it's not a normal reaction he has for a person – the last person he thought it about was _Harley_, and just look at _her_. The guy's hiding something, and the Joker's keen to find out just what.

And _Catwoman_? He's currently thinking, as Mr Trust Fund starts on about the recent restoration to the stage, about whether the Kitty-Cat will leave the guy bleeding, penniless, or both. The woman's got itchy fingers for glitter, and he's sure Bruce Wayne will have some in some 'uncrackable' vault somewhere that she just wants in on.

The lights dim, the curtains rolling back to applause from the crowd below, and he goes to take his seat, Wayne and his date in the first row and Harley and himself behind them.

Harley's lips are at his ear almost instantly. That coil she'd tightened inside of him earlier in her gym is ratcheted up a notch at the feel of her hot breath on his skin. He wants to feel it on his neck, chasing his blood through his veins.

"There's something..._about_ them."

He eyeballs her before looking back down at the stage. "Pretty sure they're saying the same about us, bunny."

The couple in front of them have their heads together too, Kitty-Cat's shapely lips at Wayne's ear. The Joker watches her full mouth shape her inaudible words, but the red flesh does nothing for him. Even the memory of that first glimpse he'd gotten of Catwoman, that December night years ago outside of Juno's pawn shop in the Narrows, of her in her skin-tight leather suit, doesn't make him itch anywhere like it used to.

He glances at his rogue's mouth in the darkness, and it's not the purple lipstick – though he _does_ like it – or the exact sorta shape of her lips, but a definite part of him gives a hard yank.

"But I know what you mean," he mutters.

She glances at him. "I know better than to give you advice. Just don't get stupid around her, 'cause she _isn't_."

"Oh, and I am?"

"K.C.," is all she says in reply, and it's all she needs to.

He's not a man who makes many mistakes, but taking his eye off of the ball because of her little, distracting striptease...well, it was a big one.

"Can't you _accept_ an apology when you get one?"

"_This _is an apology?"

He's not sure what the answer she wants to hear is, but he doesn't give a fuck.

"It's as good as any you're ever gonna get," he tells her straight, and he sees her lip curl in a smile.

"Hm. I like this kind of apology. Better than a cheap card and some trashy flowers."

He turns to grin at her. "You mean, I'm _off the hook_?"

"You tell me, baby," she whispers. "You did say I was trying to make you _bite_ my line."

Joker slips his arm around her shoulders and presses his face into her hair, ignoring her soft grunt of annoyance.

"I'll bite you anytime." He wants to sink his teeth into her soft shoulder. "_Anywhere_."

Green eyes meet his over a slender shoulder, and he watches Kitty-Cat's expression carefully. He can't figure out why she looks so troubled.

* * *

><p>The show is over, the performers have taken their bows, and almost everyone in the foyer is saying <em>tenor <em>this and _soprano_ that. He's not an uneducated man – not in the ways that matter at least – but the talk is giving him ear-ache.

He motions to the blonde on his arm that they're leaving, and _now_. Harley gives him a relieved sigh, before slipping with him through the crowd, away from Wayne and his date.

Once they're outside, he hands the ticket stub to the valet guy, who looks to be a few bullets short in his clip, and then turns to Harley, who's looking up the street, her blue eyes focused a few blocks away.

He smells the fire before he sees it, thick at the back of his throat, and he watches as the top of one of Gotham's most spectacular high-rises pops off with an almighty explosion. The debris arcs, the girders of the building groaning, and the flaming roof lands a block closer, crashing down beyond the rooftops of the apartments surrounding them.

"That's one of mine." She half-smiles. "The pink pill brigade."

The Joker doesn't ask how she knows. The car is brought around and they climb in.

The rich begin to flood out of the opera house doors as he and Harley peel away, all of them gasping and pointing at the flaming, smoking wreckage that is orange and black against the dark sky.

He sees her smile out of the corner of his eye as he takes the road leading straight past the wrecked building. There are no screaming people streaming through the building's doors since it's so late, but there are a handful of cops, all standing around their parked cars looking lost and dirty.

"They're nearly through," he tells Harley. "_Nearly_."

* * *

><p>It's been an hour since they arrived back in their building, and Harley is quite comfortably curled into one corner of her couch, idly looking through one of Jonathan's books.<p>

A glass of water sits on the floor, half-empty, and music drifts through her dimly-lit apartment from the bedroom. She can't quite remember the name of the song, but she mouths the lyrics as she thumbs the shiny pages of Pre-Raphaelite art.

"_Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums_..."

She's in a dark pink, silk cami, freshly showered, and she's already given her nails a new coat of black polish. She's finished her before-bed routine, but she doesn't feel like sleeping as such. She's not restless, just..._awake_.

Harley's also trying to work out why Selina had seemed so worried about Wayne and the Joker together. There's the obvious of the Joker taking offense or maybe a fancy to Bruce's face, but...it just seemed like something more. It had been more than concern that Harley had seen on Selina's face – something like fear.

Bud and Lou suddenly begin jabbering in their room, but she ignores them. She knows _he_'s there.

"Can I...uh, come in?"

She's surprised he's asked. She nods, not looking up from the glossy photographs that make up the book in her hands.

"I don't remember leaving the door open," she tells him, hearing his soft footsteps coming closer.

"You didn't."

Harley can't resist a small smirk. "Mm."

The couch dips at her feet. She finally glances up to see the Joker is still makeup-less from their excursion and is now wearing nothing but his black pants from his tux.

Harley lifts an eyebrow. "What is this?"

His chest is...well, it isn't what she'd thought. She'd imagined scars covering every inch of his skin and that it would mainly be an angry pink, but, in reality, it is pale like the rest of him and tightly toned, only a vague silvery line here or there. His muscles are...pleasing.

She doesn't want to compare the two, but she's almost ashamed to think that she had imagined the Joker to have Jonathan's body. He does not. The Joker is the opposite of her sweetness – Jonathan had scars from being beaten down, where the Joker has scars from success. He is still here, Jonathan isn't.

He rakes a hand through his hair, his fingers mussing his slicked back look. His smile is lazy and practically non-existent, and his gaze is intense.

"Wanna finish off what you started in the gym?"

She'd like to say no, but she has to admit, she's been curious about what it might have been like. Doing it on the floor of her gym hadn't felt quite..._right_. Not that she ever really cared for a special place to fuck, but she listens to her gut and her gut hadn't been pleased with the situation.

But she understands him now – maybe not what makes him tick, but she understands that he will always piss her off and she will never find him comfortable in the generic way. Why? Because he can _challenge_ her, and sometimes he wins. She might still think herself above him, but he's quick and he's clever, and if she were feeling generous enough she might even label him as the only man even _close_ to being her equal.

She puts the book down on the floor by the glass of water and gives him a long look.

She wonders how is mouth might feel, and his cheeks – what about the scars? His fingers are strong, able to bruise, and she likes that his nails are short, even if they aren't the cleanest she's ever seen. His shoulders are broad enough to fit her personal tastes, and his hips are slim enough that his body isn't bulky or out of proportion. He's...sleek, in a way, for a man.

"Ground rules," she says.

His eyes are fixed on her bare legs. "Try me."

"If you treat me like a call-girl after this, expecting me to scratch your every itch, then it's game over."

The Joker's eyes meet hers as his tongue wets his bottom lip. "So I won't go telling the Gotham Post and I won't expect anything from you, fine. But, in return, if _you_ have an itch, you scratch it _with me_."

"What, you want some twisted form of monogamy?"

"I don't want to get a _disease_," he stresses, smirking. "I've seen some of the men you hang out with, bunny. I don't want to be sharing anything with them."

Harley laughs – a scoff really – because it's obvious that he doesn't give a flying fuck about infection, he just wants her to himself.

"Fine," she says. "If I want it, I come to you. But, like you said, don't expect anything from me."

She's sure that if there's ever a point where she'd rather stay celibate than sleep with him, she could easy give him the slip and find a quick fuck or find a way to rid herself of him for good. He won't screw up her life, not for this.

"And we play by _my _rules in the bedroom, unless I tell you otherwise," Harley states.

His brow dips at this. "Is that so?"

"_Yes_. My body, my rules."

"Hm." He sucks on the inside of his cheek. "Fine. But that puts you two up, bunny, and I want something in return."

"Name it."

She instantly knows those words should have never passed her lips and that they never will with the Joker again, because his gaze is predatory and she suddenly feels as if she's been caught in her own trap.

He leans in, his breath hot against her face as his hand slips up her thigh. "You have to kiss me, _Harleen_, whenever and _wherever_ I want you to."

Not a terrible request, but a power she knows he'll abuse. She's already given him so many intimacies that she has only ever shared with Jonathan, it's difficult to reason with herself why she shouldn't just let him have this one in return for her control over the sex they might share.

It's a big thing for a man to give up, she knows, and even bigger, she imagines, for _the Joker_. But he's played this game well, eking out all the little treasures that she hides from the world.

Harley firms her jaw. "Deal."

His smile is small, his focus on her lips, and his left index finger comes up to tap on the pulse point in his neck.

"Here, bunny," he breathes, voice low and dark. "Kiss me right here."

She leans forward, slowly, smelling something ridiculously manly on his skin that seems part gunmetal and part night-time. He's dark and twisted, and he smells like fresh rain on the city's backstreets.

When Harley's lips touch his neck, she wonders how a man so pale can have such feverishly hot skin. It can't all be because of _her_...can it? She had no idea she affects him so much.

His pulse beats thickly beneath her parted lips and caressing breath, and his hand grips her thigh harshly when she presses her teeth to the heartbeat, wanting to feel its tempo even more keenly.

The Joker's breath leaves him in a shudder as Harley gently sucks against his artery. Her left hand grips his neck, tipping his head back with her thumb beneath his jaw, while he takes her right hand between his strong fingers and presses it against his stomach.

She slips her fingers down beneath the waistband of his pants, barely brushing the soft hair at the base of his cock, before pulling back from him completely and eyeing the red mark on the side of his neck.

His eyelids are low, his eyes black, and he looks about ready to fuck or kill. She gives him a sinful half-smile, standing from the couch and taking the hallway to the bedroom.

When she reaches the door, she looks back over her shoulder at him.

"Are you coming?"

His eyes close and he licks his lip. His fist clenches on the arm of the couch. When he stands, every muscle seems to flex and it makes her body flush with heat.

He follows her with bare feet, a dark grin on his face.


End file.
